How To Fail: View Emerging Tech As A Threat, Not Opportunity

from the classic-recipes dept

Mon, May 10th 2004 10:12am — Mike Masnick

The newspaper business has been struggling for quite some time, and like many other businesses that can't figure out how to adapt to new technologies, it's not hard to see them making mistake after mistake. This article first appeared last week, but as it's getting spread around further, I finally realized what was bugging me the most about it. It's all about how the newspaper business is trying to deal with the "threat" posed by text messaging on mobile phones. Since they're in the content business, they focus entirely on the content, and coming up with ways to adjust the content to make it more compelling to those who spend more time staring at their mobile phone screen than at a newspaper. Instead of viewing the "thumb generation" as a threat, they should be viewing it as an opportunity. They know where people are looking, they know what they're doing, why aren't they trying to deliver news to mobile phones? Instead of focusing on the content, look at the delivery mechanism and realize this is a better way to serve the constituency that doesn't see the point of getting today's news tomorrow.

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NOBODY, 10 May 2004 @ 11:05am

This is why businesses die.
Viewing new technology as a threat is a 20th century mind set. Things are changing faster than most of these people can understand. Probably because we have a system in place that rewards people for not being all that bright.

They'll either adapt to it, or someone else will. Darwinian? Yes, but this has always been true of technology and technology companies. And since everyone is becoming a technology company to some extent, it will apply to everyone.
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DV Henkel-Wallace, 10 May 2004 @ 11:18am

It's all about control
I loved this part:
it's as if every citizen had a printing press at home
These newspaper guys want control over how and what I see...sort of like the RIAA and the losers whose poorly-written web sites that try to control the page layout.

That whole world is stuck in an old paradigm. Let 'em rot away, I say.
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