Nat Torkington wrote a post over at O’Reilly Radar titled The President’s challenge and I’m pulling out the best quote out of it for here:
Take the truck, the boat, the helicopter, that we’ve sent you. Don’t wait for the time machine, because we’re never going to invent something that returns you to 1965 when copying was hard and you could treat the customer’s convenience with contempt.
You should read the whole thing to get the gist of what he is talking about, but I think a lot of what he is saying is true. Hoping to go back to the past isn’t going to change anything about today, and it actually is far more counter-productive. You see this in political realm as well when we all just wish we could have back the economy of the 1950s without thinking about what that EXACTLY means (like destroying all of the other major economies in the world … yeah).
It is better and more productive to accept the economic realities of the day and work within it. Showing outright contempt for your customers really isn’t going to work out very well.