“No One Asked for a Refrigerator Fee”
Here’s a new analogy that can be applied to the current state of the music industry, the movie industry, the TV industry and every other industry that’s being affected by rapid technological change.
The article is from Torrent Freak and speaks about what happened to one of the largest employers in Stockholm when a new technological innovation was introduced. (Thanks to Rupinder for the link.)
“I live in Stockholm, Sweden. A hundred years ago, one of the largest employers in the city was a company named Stockholm Ice. Their business was as straightforward as it was necessary: help keep perishable food edible for longer by distributing cold in a portable format.
“They would cut up large blocks of ice from the frozen lakes in the winter, store them on sawdust in huge barns, cut the blocks into smaller chunks and sell it in the streets. People would buy the ice and keep it with food in special cupboards, so the food would be in cold storage.
“(This is why some senior citizens still refer to refrigerators as “ice boxes“.)
“When households in Stockholm were electrified in the first half of the last century, these distributors of cold were made obsolete. After all, what they distributed was the ability to keep food cold, and everybody could suddenly do that themselves.
“This was a fairly rapid process in the cities. With the availability of the refrigerator from circa 1920, most households had their own refrigerator by the end of the 1930s. One of the city’s largest employers — distributors of cold — had been made totally obsolete by technical development.”
