BFTP: Home media ecology

A weekend Blue Skunk "feature" will be a revision of an old post. I'm calling this BFTP: Blast from the Past. Original post October 19, 2007.

Every time I visit with a telecommunications provider, I hear a sad litany of just how tough it is to make a profit in today's marketplace. I don't get it.

In 1988, this was, as I remember it, my telecommunications outlay:

• Basic telephone service including handset rental: $20 a month
• Long distance service, $10-15 a month (if that - long distance was to my family a rarely used luxury)
• One television with broadcast channels only and one radio (receiver built into a stereo amplifier) = $500 with a life span of 36 months = $15

Total about $50 a month.

Twenty years later, this is my telco outlay:

• Basic telephone service, no handset, $25 a month
• Long distance service, $10-20 a month
• Cell service for 3 lines, text messaging, data service: $120 a month
• Satellite TV, no movie or sports channels, $50 a month 
• Home broadband Internet access, $50 a month
• Webhosting, two sites, $40 a month
• Various wireless charges at hotels, airports, etc. $30 a month
• Three televisions, three computers, printer, scanner, 2 cell phones, 1 cell phone/PDA, 5 telephone handsets (now portable with base stations), 2 iPods, GPS system, wireless home router, DVD player, VCR, stereo receiver/amp (No TiVo - yet.) All devices which need to be replaced now and then. Maybe around $9000 worth of electronics with an estimated life span of 36 months = $250

 Total about $580 a month!*

And telco providers aren't making money? I don't get it.

I thought of this while playing with a chart that Lee Rainie from the Pew's Internet & American Life uses in his The New Media Ecology presentation. (He credits Tom Wolzien, Sanford C. Bernstein & Co., but I can't seem to locate his original work.) Here is my adaptation:

Then:

Now:

 

Rainie and Wolzien need to add a column on the far right side of the chart that reads "Personal Production." Not only in today's home media ecology do we consume information and entertainment, but on a regular basis we produce it and share it just as easily.

There's been some fuss about whether Prensky's Digital Immigrant/Digital Native analogy is accurate or useful. I'm not sure. But I do feel that while I may not have immigrated to a new digital country, I have moved from an information desert to an information jungle both at home and at school over the past 10 years or so. (And I have the bills to prove it.)

I am pretty sure that our kids don't inhabit this jungle any more skillfully than us geezers.

They've just never known anything but the jungle.

* In 2012, this is my telco outlay:

• Telephone landline - dropped
• Long distance service - included in cellphone bill
• Cell service for 2 lines, no text messaging (iPhone messaging is free), data service: $112 a month
• Data plan for iPad: $25 a month
• Cable/satellite phone - dropped 
• Netflix $20 a month
• Home broadband Internet access, $50 a month
• Webhosting, two sites, $20 a month
• Various wireless charges at hotels, airports, etc. - now use data plan on cell or iPad
• Two televisions, two laptop computers, printer, scanner, 2 smart phones (no separate GPS),  wireless home router, DVD player,  stereo receiver/amp.  All devices which need to be replaced now and then. Maybe around $6000 worth of electronics with an estimated life span of 36 months = $170 per month replacement
• Total $397 for monthly charges and hardware replacement

So the ecology may be shifting a little again. Smartphones and tablets are replacing GPS devices, separate cameras,e-book readers, TV screens, TV programming and DVDs.  Like many families, we've dropped the home telephone landline and cable TV. If I want to watch video, it as often on the tablet as it is on a TV. We probably go to 10% of the movies at the movie theater as we once did. 

OK, telcos - you can start complaining again...