Red Queens and Increasing Returns
When I first read the assignment for Module 4 that I had to watch a movie, I was a little shocked. What could a movie possibly do with my current educational studies? So I began my quest to find a movie. First, I looked to our movie library only to find that we did not have any of the titles. Next, I put out a request via a popular social networking site to find out that a friend of mine did have one of the titles, however she was 2,000 miles away. So knowing that I needed the movie a bit quicker than snail mail would allow, I went to the internet and Netflix won out.
How could you not love Netflix? The option to have unlimited DVD rentals and instant streaming to my computer…what could be better? It’s definitely worth the monthly fee to have the late fees disappear when I can’t find the DVD or my children have “put it away” in a manner that they can only find.
The battle of rental vs. video on demand is an example of Increasing Returns. In this force, “Two innovations hit the market at about the same time, (and) by chance one technology gets locked in and drives the other to extinction (Thornburg, 2008). Video on demand hit the market a bit later than rental stores, however I feel that it still falls under this category due to the increasing number of rental stores going out of business in the past few years (extinction). In today’s on demand world it only seemed logical to have a favorite American pastime jump on board.
In McLuhan’s tetrad there are four areas to consider for DVD’s and video on demand; Enhances, Obsoletes, Retrieves/Rekindles, and Reverses. I would have to say that video on demand obsoletes the need for concrete buildings in the movie watching world and DVD’s enhances the movie experience by allowing consumers the luxury of enjoying a movie in the comfort of their own home. It will be an interesting ride over the next decade or so to see how this connection shifts and changes.
