It's Not Too Late for Old School Technology

Older technologies frequently face predictions of their demise as they are replaced with cutting-edge innovations, but so-called progress is rarely the sea change it’s chalked up to be, writes Steve Lohr in the New York Times. If old tech can adapt, it can often stay alive. Case in point: PCs were supposed to kill the mainframe computer, but the back office workhorse is still kicking thanks to investment and improvements.

Changes in business practices, along with the evolution of old technology, can keep systems afloat. Movies faced a turf war with television, but they held on thanks to changes that kept the cinematic experience more vivid than TV viewers could expect. Some say digital media will kill the silver screen, but a tech forecaster says film can dodge another bullet: “Technologies want to survive,” so “they reinvent themselves.” (More film stories.)