Technology cycle – of a different kind!!

Other day, while working I realized that the Skype status is offline – I set to ‘online’ and I got a pop-up message from Windows firewall – stating that this program is blocked. Interestingly, I do not get this message for MSN messenger. I am not on Yahoo! so can’t talk about that.

Windows blocking Skype may be competition issue – but there is something deeper than that. I see that technologies moving in an interesting cycle. A SIP protocol is defined – lot of text chat programs come up – many of them become dominant with varying (and often contested !) degrees of success. Then end user starts getting un-comfortable. She wants to ‘chat’ with someone on another messenger – but does not want to register herself for that messenger ‘as well’. It would mean – another identity, possibly another password to remember. End user pressure forces Yahoo to allow its subscribers to talk to MSN and vice versa. Is it convenience or a ‘forced’ hand holding ?

Take case of banks. Earlier, drawing cash meant a trip to bank and possibly standing in line in front of Teller. Come ATM machines and the lines (mostly!) vanish. Life seems to be easy – Every bank has many ATM machines all over the city. Life rolls along - till one day in some part of city when you urgently need cash and you do not find the ATM machine for your bank and you start wondering about “Universal” ATM machine – that allows you to draw cash from many banks – at a small charge.

Many such examples – take the ‘virtual’ e-mail accounts that just forward the mails to another account that can be changed as and when needed. Or the solutions like e-wallet or Paypal – hide many credit card details behind a single userid-passowrd combination.

In an attempt to make living ‘simple’ or human interactions more effective – technology actually makes it more complicated for some time – till an improvement comes along to make it manageable again !!
(C) Abhijit Tongaonkar - 2007