True about the Cambrian Explosion !! Only thing I’d say is that the signal to noise ratio might have increased since it’s so easy – now we need all sorts of weird tools to help us find stuff we like.

While I certainly have enough cassette-loving friends that I don’t buy the traditional narrative of obsolescence, it’s fantastic to be reminded of the larger global perspective on the persistence of technology. I appreciate you pointing us to those pieces!

Kevin Kelly (kk.org, founding editor of Wired) came up with the theory that “there is no species of technology that’s gone globally extinct on this planet.”. Robert Krulwich interviewed him about this and did his best to crowdsource finding *some technology* that’s no longer made, and failed. It made for a very good Morning Edition story here: http://goo.gl/7R7DQ, with the conclusion here: http://goo.gl/ZuFlU.

On a related note, I enjoy Kelly’s most recent book “What Technology Wants” (http://goo.gl/4jqHF). Despite some of his high language about “The Technium”, he illuminated lots of the interesting ways that technologies fit into our evolution, and their own.

For example, a book is a medium for text. It’s also a specific technology (codices eventually replaced scrolls, for most purposes); we just don’t see it as that anymore.

A vinyl record is a medium. A turntable is a technology. Both are embedded in a larger infrastructure that supports their use and dissemination.

Whether you want to call it media or technology doesn’t change the central point: that each method of delivering content has different affordances, and there is no upside for the users in supporting the reduction of methods.