The wasteful speed of new technologies.(FOREFRONT)

WE LOVE music. How many from the Generation Y knows what vinyl records are? They come in three speeds: 78 revolutions per minute, rpm; 45 rpm; and 33.3 rpm or what is known as long-playing records. Then came the MP3 revolution where the song could be compressed and sent over the Internet. Why waste money buying albums in the form of digital compact discs when you can buy singles less expensively over the Internet? With falling sales, we see that many CD shops are closing their doors for good.

We enjoy spending our time watching movies. The video cassette recorder or player was a wonderful invention. With it, we could preserve the movies and build up a film library we can enjoy for years to come. There is one major fault with videotapes--fungus grows on the surface very quickly making them unreadable. There were two competing formats: Sony's Betamax introduced in 1975 and JVC's VHS introduced in 1976. My friend spent a lot of money to build up his collection of Hollywood movies in VHS format. To conserve his precious movies, he kept them in an air-conditioned room. But all was lost when new technology introduced the Video Compact Disc, VCD. This later made way for the Digital Versatile Disc, DVD, which has bigger capacity. So video fans had to buy new hardware and software to keep up with the Lees. Today, we have the Blu-ray format which has better features and are tempting enough for fans to start another collection and trashing their old favourites in the outdated format.

The same trend goes for cameras. The traditional emulsion film has given way to digital formats. Kodak which was a household name in films has lost its major markets to changing technology.

The morph of the cellphone into its modern form is another example of wasteful technology. Many change their cellphones to the latest gadgets because phone companies encourage them to do so in order to keep them on a new two-year contract. Do we really need the new features? I have seen an elderly woman at the Starhub centre asking endless questions about how to use the simple features on her new gadget. She didn't know how to send SMS to start with.

The new cellphone is a camera for both still and video photography. It is also a music player and you can surf the Worldwide Web and receive and send E-mails. You can use it for videoconferencing, and also let your spouse keep track of you using global positioning software. The phone manufacturers should also introduce blades to make the cellphone double as a shaver.

We spend a lot of our earnings just keeping up with new technology whether we really have a need for it or not. Austrian economist Joseph Schumpeter coined the phrase "creative destruction" in his book, "Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy". He defined it as the catalytic process of change essential to capitalism. He writes: "The fundamental impulse that sets and keeps the capitalist engine in motion comes from the new consumers' goods, the new methods of production or transportation, the new markets, the new forms of industrial organisation that capitalist enterprise creates." Think about what Schumpeter said before you spend your money on the new gizmo.

R Tan Chee Teik

Editor

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