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Digital is now, undeniably, part of pop culture. While in the past there have been films, albums, and even individual songs that have become icons of that age’s zeitgeist, we live in an age which will be (one might imagine) summed up by the iPhone, the iPad, Facebook and Twitter.

Whilst office workers of previous decades may have spent their breaks around water-coolers discussing the shock revelation of Luke’s father or the reasons they won’t be entering the water that summer, this decades workers now huddle over computer monitors spreading the joy of this YouTube video or that Twitter feed. On countless occasions have I overheard (and been guilty of myself starting) conversations about the merits of a certain life changing App or the next contender to the iPad throne.

This introduction into the hall of pop may reflect a high-point for all things digital, it also heralds a whole world of issues that even the highest and mightiest of companies has already succumbed to.

It may be hard to imagine but there was once a time when singles slowly climbed the charts and films weren’t defined by their opening night sales, this is no-longer the case… and the same, it would seem is now true of tech (in its broadest sense). Digital has been cursed by the instant knowledge generation it has itself created.

Those of us who would have logged onto Rotten Tomato to gain insight into whether a movie is worth seeing are now browsing the web to find out if a product is worth buying. The plethora of information and choice available on the web is also causing the downfall of those same sites it is made up of, as users are invited almost daily to make the choice between two or more web applications with similar functions.

And as poor reviews are spread on Twitter, scathing YouTube parodies become viral and visitor figures are publicly speculated over, multi-billion dollar companies are having to make tough decisions about what to do with their titanic-tech.

Unlike the movie and music industries, who have, over the years, become prepared for a ‘flop’ (quietly closing down screenings and silently releasing the DVD onto the shelves of HMV) the tech world isn’t and has adopted a ‘live-fast, die-fast’ attitude... closing down projects as soon as the whiff of bad press sullies its purity.

If I were to name but a few examples of this I might include Microsoft’s Kin mobiles that were aborted after less than 50 days on sale or more recently HP’s TouchPad tablet that was pulled just seven weeks after it was stocked on shelves. Other companies, including Palm and Flip, have even cancelled products just days before they were due to be released.

As you might expect, while these represent the straight-to-DVD bargain basement disappointments, others are revelling in the block-buster limelight. This could be no more true than for Apple who release products to the types of crowds you might expect at Hollywood premiers and have opening weekend sales figures that eclipse those of the most eagerly expected werewolf or wizard based movie.

But where does this leave us, both as a public and an industry?

When Google’s Wave crashed in 2010 – just over a year after its original release, and only 77 days after it was made available to the general public – it raised quite a few questions. Third party companies who had built and developed tools for integration into the web app – investing time and money into the project – had to start asking at what point was it advisable to start building for new platforms. The general public was left wondering whether it’s worth their time creating accounts for, and learning how to use and navigate, the “next big thing” if that thing will cease to exist three months down the line.

This could be no more clear than with Google TV – the ”TV that just got smarter” – as content providers, jaded by the failure of projects such as Wave, refused to make their content available.

So how does this play out?

Clearly I can't do anything other than speculate (a lovely term for an evidence-less guess), however I do see a rather sunny future ahead with one of two changes occurring in the market. One - large companies take more time over their R&D... researching if there is actually room in the market for their product and developing something that is genuinely unique and different to the competition; in short giving us better considered and longer living tech.

Alternatively, whilst large companies battle it out and continue to kill each other off time and time again, the smaller, indie start-ups (the ones that slowly build up their followings over time) become the cult classics of the internet; breaking into the mainstream as the much loved underdogs... it was, after all, these types of businesses that the internet was built on and their bloated descendants that still dominate today's market!

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