Time compression continues...

For the past few days I have been wondering why there is still a Newsweek or Time magazine. Whereas newspapers come out once a day, these magazines come out once a week. I have already complained that I find newspapers woefully out of date when compared to news on the Internet. Why then do people still buy magazines containing news a week old? At today’s pace this is practically ancient history by the time one read’s it. Yet, today my fiancee’s actions changed the focus of my post.

We had been following the case of the Willbanks missing bride on television since we watch the news fairly often. This morning we were watching the news when the reporter said, “We have surprising news on the missing bride. Stay tuned and we’ll tell you after the commercial.”

With that my fiancee jumped up and said, “Forget that! I’m not waiting until the commercial is over!” and ran out of the room. At first I thought she was going to the bathroom or something until I heard the clicking of keys on a keyboard. She was actually looking on CNN.com to see what they said about her. Before the commercial break was over we knew that she had run away with cold feet, was in New Mexico, and that the police were not pressing charges at this time. The only thing we got extra from the television news was an interview with an FBI correspondent and from the family pastor. Television is really going to have to work hard if they are going to add value over the Internet.

I was proud of my fiancee who, a few years ago didn’t know much about technology, but I was extremely amazed at how fast paced our world had become. Even a two minute commercial break was an intolerable amount of time to wait for a news story. Yet, a few years ago one simply had to wait two minutes. This is no longer the case as the Internet has empowered us as never before to be able to find information instantaneously. Since most locations with a television also have Internet access, it remains to be seen what solution news agencies have. Not only were we not watching their commercials, the way they pay the bills, but we were getting the news before they even reported it. As technology progresses, it will be interesting to see where this leads.