Although I work in technology I consider myself a technology laggard (see Geoffrey Moore’s “Crossing the Chasm”.  It’s a great book for anyone in the technology field)  . I like to think that my education as a software and electrical engineer has taught me that it’s just plain wasteful to live on the bleeding edge. Its fun to build things on the bleeding edge but I have little desire to consume products on this edge (I do have exceptions).

One technology area that I plan on waiting a long time before adopting is high definition television.

The HD-DVD and BLU-RAY format war means that someone is paying $500 today for a Betamax that is just going to be collecting dust in a few years when the other format wins the war. There aren’t many titles yet and the fact that most studios are picking sides means that EVERYONE is going to lose in the near term. This is just bad news.

As far as HD television goes they are still too expensive and HD programming is NOT pervasive. Also, because the technology is overly complicated at the moment, a large percentage of people who shelled out 1000s of dollars on HD TVs are watching them with standard definition. People just have too much disposable income I guess. Of course not all these people have disposable income… they just want to live on the edge even if they don’t understand it. Or perhaps they didn’t understand that the cable company was going to charge them extra to receive HD television.

Friends of mine who have HD have all started putting antennas on their houses. After all the BEST HD content is over the airwaves because the cable company hasn’t compressed it. It seems like we are going backwards. In the 70s everyone got cable television to avoid those silly antennas.

Don’t even get me started on these HD fanatics who also watch shows on their video IPod. I can’t live without a large screen HD TV but I’ll shell out $2 to watch shows on a tiny video screen with poor quality encoding.

My Conclusion, Some people just want the latest technology regardless of whether it makes sense. While some people can afford to live on the bleeding edge for most people it just means credit card debt they can never seem to shake because they are slaves to the edge.