This past weekend, I made my way into an area antique store. No, I don't normally trek there, but from time to time it's fun, especially to re-connect with things from my childhood. "Hey, I didn't think anyone else had that Donkey Kong tabletop arcade game! Look, there's that Pete's Dragon read-along record!"
It struck me though that the antique store of the future will be quite different. Where now people buy up phonographs and tube-type radios, either for their visual appeal, or sound characteristics, will the same be true of iPods? "Hey, there's a 2nd gen 10gb iPod!" While the nerds among us will connect in the same way, there will most likely be far less interest in setting an iPod in the corner of a room than say, a player piano, or Edison phonograph.
And what about media? A record player today that still functions can be paired with albums of the same vintage. Obviously there won't be many mp3's lying around in the shop. And today there are walls and walls of VHS tapes. As more media goes digital, what will fill the void? Will the market of used tech, films, and music dry up completely?
After all, it's highly unlikely a 40 year-old iPod will power on (the battery will have given up long ago) and it won't play nice with the latest and greatest audio codecs either.
Does all of this technology simply become disposable? One iPod replaced by another, replaced by another? Or thinking about toys, what about the curious case of the Webkinz. For the uninitiated, one of the most recent toy crazes is Webkinz. Webkinz are stuffed animals, who come along with a code to use online to build an entire virtual world for your pet. Once those Webkinz servers are shut off, in say ten years, does part of your childhood disappear too? While you'll be able to buy the same stuffed animal at a yard sale or flea market, you'll never get back the virtual world you created.
In some ways, this could be good news. The overall theme here is a reduction in the amount of "stuff" for sale. That doesn't necessarily mean a reduction in the amount of stuff produced.
What will the antique store of the future look like?
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