Technology Convergence

Abstract

Technology moves quickly and there are constant new technologies introduced every day. With each new successful technology come many that are not as successful or are just failures. The two types of technology development are leading edge and bleeding edge. Bleeding edge technology is technology so new its development is not complete and has many issues. Leading edge technology is technology that has been tested and works to within the specifications given by the developer and is ahead of its predecessors. Bleeding edge technologies eventually can become leading edge technologies with the proper development and testing. Consumers can make informed decision when purchasing technology and decide if the technology is bleeding edge or leading edge. When technologies converge to create a superior product that takes the best of the separate products this is called technology convergence.

Technology Convergence

Technology moves quickly and there are constant new technologies introduced every day. With each new successful technology come many that are not as successful or are just failures. The two types of technology development are leading edge and bleeding edge. Each of these technologies can be available to the public, but only leading edge should be considered for purchase. Bleeding edge technology is technology that has not been thoroughly tested and has many problems that have not been worked out Boline (2006). Leading edge technology is technology that has been thoroughly tested and works up to and above current industry standards.

Leading Edge Technologies

There are many examples of leading edge technologies out available some early ones are the iPod, flash drives, and Windows operating systems (OS). The iPod introduced by Apple on October, 23 2001 ("Ipod History The Complete History Of The Ipod", 2012). Steve jobs the founder of Apple saw a void in the digital music player market everything available to this point was either very large or small with interfaces that did not give the consumer much to work with. The original iPod was frowned upon by critics and sold for $400. Despite all this the technology proved valid and made Apple a pioneer in digital music players.

Flash drives were introduced in 2000 as an answer to the need to have a small external and portable device to transfer data from computer to another Sung (2012). For years consumers had relied on floppy disks, cd, and DVD drives to transfer and store data externally, but all of these were limited in their storage capacity. The development of USB flash drives permits for greater storage in a smaller package. The flash drive had storage from 4 GB to 128 GB although expensive at first flash drives have come down in price to the point that a consumer can purchase a 8GB for around $10. This technology was good right from the start and is simple without problems.

The original Windows OS introduced in 1985 by Microsoft allowed the user to use a mouse pointer to drop down commands instead of typing in MS-DOS as they had previously ("A History of Windows", 2012). Windows has gone through several developments over the years to the current version Windows 7. Most of the versions have been released as leading edge technology with very few problems and improvements that put these ahead of other OS on the market at the time.

Bleeding Edge Technologies

Bleeding edge technology can be summed up in a word fail. Bleeding edge technology can be any technology released without proper testing and is available for consumer use. Bleeding edge technologies can be open source software developed as it grows by those using it. Another example of a bleeding edge technology that has parts in leading edge technology is Microsoft windows.

"Open source software (OSS) refers to software that is developed, tested, or improved through public collaboration and distributed with the idea that the must be shared with others, ensuring an open future collaboration" (Rouse, 2006, para. ). The reason that this type of software can be bleeding edge is