Replacement - A Case for Adoption?
It bothers me a little that technology advocates tend to promote their products as replacements. For instance, MP3 was touted as eventually replacing CDs. An article on internetnews.com titled “Diebold for Democracy” quotes Jim Adler, founder and CEO of VoteHere, an e-voting company, as saying paper receipts is moving in the wrong direction. Bill Gates recently said that DVDs will be obsolete in 10 years.
There are countless other examples of these predictions. Why is this? Obviously technology companies want their newer technologies to replace older technologies because it creates the largest market for their products. Replacement also portrays a lack of any weakness in the newer product. And advocates also know that predicting a product as a replacement causes a controversy that receives more media attention.
However, the “replacement case“ also hinders adoption because it offers an extreme position that implies lack of choice.
I think a more responsible and less polarizing approach would be to advocate new technology and products as providing more options that have particular strengths over older technologies.
For instance, I have not adopted MP3s as quickly as others because I find just as much value in a CD's cover art as I do in the music (a lot of jazz music cover art kicks butt). Many people pride themselves on their music collection and even prominately display it in their homes. MP3 do not offer this. However, storing multiple albums on a pocket-sized machine also has its benefits, but if I own the song on CD can I potentially be prosecuted for downloading its MP3 for free?
Electronic voting machines can offer a clean and straight-forward user interface that cannot possibly be achieved with paper ballots, but they do not provide the level of proof and evidence of a casted vote that paper receipts can.
Don't advocate .NET as a replacement for Java, just show how the strengths of each can work together to create a better application (ok. Kind of a stretch. I know.).
Just show how the new and old can work together to make anything better and provide options that cater to a wide and diverse user group.