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What is convergence? | June 29, 2009
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Get in touch with technology with Tech Stuff from HowStuffWorks.com.
Chris
Hello there everybody, and welcome to Tech Stuff. My name is Chris Paulette. I’m an editor here at HowStuffWorks.com, and sitting next to me, as usual, is Senior Writer Jonathan Strickland.
Jonathan
I don’t remember how to do this anymore.
Chris
I don’t know what you’re talking about.
Jonathan
Well, I was gone for a week and we skipped a week of recording.
Chris
But they don’t know that.
Jonathan
Well, no.
Chris
They do now.
Jonathan
Well, they do now. They do now. We record really far in advance, which is probably why when you guys listen to some of these podcasts when we have predictions, things like that that are very timely at the time we record them, they’re not so timely by the time they come out. That’s why.
Chris
Yup. And one of these days, somebody’s going to make a giant collider. Anyway.
Jonathan
Anyway. So we’re actually going to talk about something that is pretty timely, and it’s something that we’ve chatted bout in previous episodes as well, right?
Chris
Yeah.
Jonathan
It’s actually my favorite word, right?
Chris
Oh yeah.
Jonathan
Convergence. So we’ve used this word a lot in the past, and we’ve had a few people write in and say, “Exactly what do you mean by this? Can you give some examples? What’s the deal with this whole convergence thing?’ And of course, the word convergence has several meanings, but from a technological standpoint, in general, what it means is that you have multiple gadgets or devices in different form factors that begin to do the same sort of tasks, so that eventually they all being to involve into a more unified form factor. And there are a lot of different examples that we can give.
Chris
Yeah, did you have a particular place to start, or should I just throw one out?
Jonathan
You can throw one out if you’d like. I mean, I know the most obvious one in my mind, but go ahead.
Chris
Okay, well, let’s go back in time a little bit then. You know, back when you had a video game console and something that played movies.
Jonathan
Right.
Chris
And they were both attached to your TV.
Jonathan
That’s a good example. Very good example! So you had, let’s say, either a laser disk player or -
Chris
VCR.
Jonathan
Yeah, VCR, exactly, and you would use that to watch recorded shows, and then you would want o hit a little switch on the back of your TV so you could switch over to your kickass Atari 2600 and play a little Berserk, or if you’re unlucky like me, E.T. And -
Tags: convergence, evolution, PlayStation, smart phones, technological convergence, TechStuff, TechStuff podcast
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