3 - Unplanned Obsolesce: Crappy Immortality

Let me tell you a couple of stories. They're basically true stories, but I'll lightly file off the serial numbers. Stay with me, there's a reason.

Many years ago, a bunch of engineers with a very big company were ordered to build a computer in secret. It had to be cheaper and better that the early computers that other little companies were currently making. The computer needed an operating system, and they had a tight time budget. So they decided to purchase an operating system from an existing vendor. Who should it be? Why, the best on the market, of course! So they trundled over to the biggest and best provider of operating systems at the time, and went to the their boss. But before they saw the boss, they asked him to sign a secrecy agreement. The very big company required it. The operating system boss said, "Sorry, won't do it. We treat all customers equally here, and don't sign secrecy agreements with anybody. We can port our operating system to just about any computer, but no secret deals." So the engineers went away, because the very big company would have their hides if they didn't have a secrecy agreement. But without an operating system, all they had was a pile of parts.
So they went to the next company on their list to provide another piece of software, a BASIC interpreter for people to write their own simple programs with. They asked the interpreter boss to sign a secrecy agreement. He said, "Sure! I don't care what happens to my other customers." So the engineers bought a license to the BASIC software, and asked the interpreter boss, "Can you provide us with an operating system?" The interpreter boss said "Sure! On the same terms as the BASIC compiler." The engineers went away, not realizing they'd sign the future of their machine away from the very big company.
The interpreter boss had a problem, though. He didn't have an operating system to sell, and he knew he couldn't write one in time to meet the very big company’s deadline. And if he didn't deliver, his company would be sunk. However, across town, there was a rawhide group of programmers who had written an operating system that would work on the very big company's new computer, but it was buggy and not very good. Besides he didn't own it. Easily remedied. He went across town, and offered to buy the company from the programmers for a relatively modest sum. It was enough to set them up in Hawaii, so the programmers jumped on the hook and grinned from ear to ear. The interpreter boss didn't care how buggy and limited it was, he had agreed to provide an operating system, and here was an operating system.
How did the story end? The very big company's new computer was a smash success. The operating system company (with the best operating system at the time) would eventually fail, and the "fair treating" boss becoming an alcoholic and eventually being stomped to death in a biker bar. The interpreter boss became one of the richest men in the world. The descendant of the buggy operating system (still buggy) control 60-70 percent of all the computers in the world. And the very big company finally had to get out of the small computer business it had standardized with it's machine, because without the control of the operating system, they didn't have a competitive advantage over other cheap computer producers. The very big company's engineers had signed it away, way back at the beginning.... 

In the early days of home computers, a company that had specialized in arcade games decided to make a home computer. It was a modest success as a computer, but sneered at for being game oriented by other computer manufacturers. It attracted game programmers at the time, and caused a small software firm to get started. Rather than writing their own games, they decided to buy games from other programmers and package them up fancy, and act like a Hollywood studio. The first four games they released were for the home computer from the arcade maker. They were a success, and were eventually ported over to another similar machine. But the Hollywood model was always "the next big hit", so after a few years the original programs were dropped and forgotten about, except for a few cult players. The arcade company went bust, and so did the other similar machine. The programs were destined for the scrapheap....
But a funny thing happened on the way to the scrapheap. Some of the cult gamers were also programmers. The computer had gotten so fast and powerful, that you could run extremely complex programs at blinding speed on them. So they thought, what if we could write an emulator for the old machine that would run under the modern common operating system? Would the machine be fast enough to emulate the old machine at the pace the old machine actual ran at? The answer was YES! and suddenly there were emulators for just about all the old machines from the early days. And you can now run the first four programs, or just about any program you can get converted into a file the common operating system can read. It didn't stop with emulators for old, obsolete, computers. Some other programmers got the idea of writing emulators for old versions of the common operating system. Suddenly, for a few bucks you could buy an emulator that would let you run operating systems and the related software all the way back to the buggy first version of operating system. (With a few drawbacks. It didn't slow down the software to a particular speed, like the obsolete computer emulators did, so games that depended on the machine being at a particular speed wouldn't be playable, and programs that drove outside hardware, like printers, didn't have the interfaces for modern hardware replacements, so you couldn't drive external hardware anymore.)

Why am I telling these stories?
Because there's a hidden reality embedded in these stories. That reality is that in the Digital World, immortality is an option, not a hopeless dream. Let me be more specific. A program, or a data file, can be executed as long as there exists some form of computer capable of executing it. And that changes the whole world of obsolescence. The creative world can't depend on old stuff going away. It'll always be out there, somewhere. And some people will still be using it, if it can be used. The logic of programs doesn’t change. The content of data files doesn’t change, unless a program deliberately changes it. This immortality isn't perfect, though. Whatever bugs and flaws you started with, you'll still have. That makes it a pretty crappy immortality. But it's still competition to the latest and greatest. It doesn't wear out, like things in the analog world. And that has a direct impact on you.
When you acquire a piece of data, you're potentially getting it for a very long time. As long as you back it up, to protect it from the varagarities of hardware failure it could last long past your lifetime. So this make getting even a trivial piece of data a long term planning event. It's not just will you be happy with it today, but what about 20 years from now, or 50? Can you even back it up? If you can't, you've just rendered your purchase long term meaningless. When the hardware dies, so does the value of your purchase. Eventually, you'll have to buy it over again. Now if you only want the latest and greatest, this probably won't matter to you. But you'll be forking over money for your tastes for all your life. Don't be suprised when people who don't require the latest and greatest end up far more affluent than you.
I guess that leads to the moral (sic) of the story. Acquiring data (and programs are just a form of data that can be executed), is the longest-term purchase you can make. Longer than good furniture, longer than a house, longer than a stock. So choose wisely, for the long term. It really is an investment, even the most trivial music file. With a little planning, you'll have it for the rest of your life, and pass it on to somebody else. Get the best quality you can find that meets the requirements of being able to be backed up, and pay for it only once. Paying for it more that once is merely pouring money down a drain. And there are so many better uses for money than that....