It seems like no news cycle passes without a pronouncement of the death of a medium. Newsprint gets the most obituaries these days. Many other things are apparently dead:
- Voicemail is dead.
- “LinkedIn is dead.” (overheard quote)
- Television is dead.
- Blogging is dead.
- Twitter is dead.
- Mail is dead.
Death everywhere. Categorically pronouncing something dead is most certainly alive. And depressing, especially when there’s enough other and real bad news to go around.
I say, “It ain’t over till it’s over”. When are humans dead? Would you pronounce a retiree or an elderly person dead? The “dead” media are in the senior stage of their lives. But alive they are.
I’m not bemoaning the decline or demise of anything. All technology gets replaced (and improved) some day. So what a medium or product dies? Another one comes along fulfilling the original function better, improving the function, or even inventing a new one. It’s just the nature of life cycles. But as long as a tool still helps an organization achieve its goals, it’s not dead.
The bigger point parallels the feature versus benefit juxtaposition. Railway may have declined, but transportation is alive and well. Newsprint may be on the way out, but journalism is thriving. I own vinyl records, cassettes, CDs and mp3s, each of which signifies a part of my life. So what I’m (slowly) transitioning to streaming? I still listen to music.
I hereby pronounce the phrase “[fill in the blank] is dead” dead.
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Tho strickly speaking I was arguing that TV isn’t dead, so not fitting into your model