Henry Jenkins explores what he calls the “Black Box Fallacy” in his book, Convergence Culture.  He describes this as the fallacy that our home entertainment systems will consolidate into one box.  Instead, Jenkins says,

“I am seeing more and more black boxes.  There are my VCR, my digital cable box, my DVD player, my digital recorder, my sound system, and my two game systems, not to mention a huge mound of videotapes, DVDs and CDs, game cartridges and controllers….The perpetual tangle of cords that stands between me and my “home entertainment” center reflects the degree of incompatibility and dysfunction that exist between the various media technologies.  And many of my MIT students are lugging around multiple black boxes - their laptops, their cells, their iPods, their Game Boys, their BlackBerrys, you name it.”

I think Jenkins’ Black Box Fallacy has merit in that yes, many of us early adopters have more wires connecting our stuff to other stuff than ever before.  But I think the technology has other variables.  It seems more new gadgets are hitting the market than consumers and businesses can join and perfect.  But that utopian Black Box may be in the future.  It took several years, but the Playstation 2 included a DVD player.  My cable box also functions as my DVR and access hundreds of movies, many free (but not enough).  PDAs can be organizers, cell phones, MP3 players, and gaming systems.  Media systems come with hard drives to hold movies and music.

This trend will continue, but we need time when the tools of our entertainment and work have time to improve and evolve.  Cable boxes will come with the prevailing high-def disc drive and a hard drive to store hundreds of movies.  Internet access, a couple of USB ports, and maybe even an operating system. This will happen less for demand and more for the fringe benefits.  The competition between systems will require building on top of the basics.  Video game systems, however, will be the exception, at least for the lengthy future, since gaming companies thrive off the competition of creating their own systems.  These systems, however, are already trying to be the centerpieces of our home entertainment.  More hard drive space, more internet access, and better movie systems.  Similar to computers, video games systems would allow us to store video games.  Our cell phones will develop in the same way.

This is a ways away and possibly my own hopeful thinking.  But consolidating our entertainment systems will become more important as our systems become cheaper yet more efficient.  In order to make buying new systems worth the money, each will require new features.  Video game systems are playing this game.  So are cell phones and of course, computers.  Life will be so much simpler.

And then they’ll create something all new, and we’ll have to replace everything again.