subject: Hit Me With Your Memory Stick [print this page] Why are people just as likely to have a Memory Stick key fob as they are to be carrying a mobile phone these days?
The answers are clear, if a little convoluted.
We live in an information rich society with digital data flying at us in all manner of formats. Complimenting the more conventional means of relaying information such as terrestrial broadcasting via radio and TV we now have access to video clips on the internet via sites like Youtube and social media websites as well as podcasts and static information formats such as pdf's and jpegs. Consequently, there is an incredible wealth of downloadable information on the internet which has ultimately changed the way in which we conduct fundamental aspects of our lives. For instance, our spending habits have been significantly influenced by this shift in data availability. The internet has allowed data to move from immutable proprietary platforms to a much more fluid base, and developments in hardware and consumables allow us to retrieve this information in ever more varied ways.
For example, the ownership of music has changed beyond all recognition since the advent of internet downloads. We no longer need to physically go to a store and buy music tracks and albums along with the storage device, formerly vinyl records and more latterly CD's and mini disks.
Perhaps one of the key reasons that mini disks did not endure is because of this shift in spending habits. Internet downloads meant that we were much more likely to opt to use CD's, which could be used in conjunction with out computers as well as our music players, a reality that ultimately sounded the death knell for a format that was not as equally versatile, despite the superior sound quality that min disks offered us. CD's would have met the same fate when technological advancements gave us MP3 players, customised music mobile phones, like the old Sony Eriksons, and the more recent multimedia devices like the iPlayer, had we not grown so accustomed to using them. This coupled with the fact that recordable CD's are incredibly cheap compared to other means of storage has definitely extended their life-span. Nevertheless, times are still changing at a rapid rate, with technological developments of other media constantly closing the price gap. The diminishing costs of memory sticks and SD cards, coupled with their exponentially enhanced capacity and portability, is making CD's an increasingly less desirable option.
Music piracy has also extended the life of the use of CD's. The fact that we are able to use recordable CD's for duplicating music, which were originally intended for industry use and for storing general computer files, has maintained some of their appeal. We are still much less likely to store our music files on a memory stick to share with a friend than we are to quickly burn off a disk that we can seamlessly hand over in the pub. But it won't be long before the tipping point is reached. Memory sticks, with their diminishing costs and increased capacity are clearly set to dominate the future. Similarly, the 2GB high memory density SD cards that offer an impressive non-volatile memory solution, coupled with being eminently portable, will mean that multimedia players will comfortably outlive the use of CD's by a long chalk.
