Red Queens or Increasing Returns

To watch the Minority Report, I looked for ways to view it free of charge.  I called a few of my pals that I know are true movie buffs to see if maybe they had the DVD laying around somewhere, but they did not have it.  I called another friend to see if he had it on Netflix, but I could not get contact him.  I looked through Comcast Cablevision-On Demand and again, to no avail.  Then I thought to myself why not try Google it and see what happens?  The search brought me to YouTube where I could watch the whole movie in 10 minute increments.  For the first time, I watched a whole movie that had been stored in an online social environment.  In turn, it was a bit distracting picking it up where it left off every 10 minutes, but I certainly accomplished my mission of experiencing the movie free of charge (Shhhh).  Now that I reflect on that search, it has come to my attention that looking for a Blockbuster or Family Video store was really never even considered an option at the time.  I mean, I thought of it, but only as a last resort.  Video-on-demand, in one form or other, seemed to be the most viable solution to my problem.

This link is to a Wordpress Blog by Ryan Lawler and gives us a look at an interesting perspective of his thoughts about DVDs and the movie business in 2010.  Check it out.

The force of increasing returns consists of two innovations hitting the consumer market at the same time with one of them getting popular while driving the other to extinction (Laureate, 2009a).  The force of Red Queens on the other hand is directly related to competition between two technologies and leaves all other similar technology competitors choking on the dust created by their bursts in popularity (Laureate, 2009b).  Since the innovations of DVD and video-on-demand hit the market at vastly different times, I am inclined to believe the competition between the two delivery mediums to be an example of the force of Red Queens.  Furthermore, even though I foresee a decline in rental profits, DVDs are versatile enough to hang around for quite awhile.  As far as where these two delivery mediums are considering the four criteria of the McLuhan tetrad, well both would be falling into every criteria simultaneously.  I would dare to say concentrated efforts for DVDs is to refocus to what they are actually good for like storage, video recording anything lengthy, etc. while video-on-demand is evolving into whatever it will turn out to actually be.  Any predictions?  Instead of Napster, say Filmster?

I commented on Michele Baylor's blog @ http://msmichelle8842.blogspot.com/2012/08/module-5-red-queens-and-increasing.html?showComment=1344613381790#c8093960905646835932

I also commented on Keith Klein's blog @ https://kklein66.wordpress.com/2012/08/08/module-5-red-queens-and-increasing-returns/#comment-57

References

Laureate Education, Inc., (Executive Producer). (2009a). Increasing returns [Video webcast]. Retrieved from https://class.waldenu.edu/webapps/portal/frameset.jsp?tab_tab_group_id=_2_1&url=%2Fwebapps%2Fblackboard%2Fexecute%2Flauncher%3Ftype%3DCourse%26id%3D_967488_1%26url%3D

Laureate Education, Inc., (Executive Producer). (2009b). Red queens [Video webcast]. Retrieved from https://class.waldenu.edu/webapps/portal/frameset.jsp?tab_tab_group_id=_2_1&url=%2Fwebapps%2Fblackboard%2Fexecute%2Flauncher%3Ftype%3DCourse%26id%3D_967488_1%26url%3D