Remember audio tape?
Sound quality was muffled and dark. Play time was limited, cassettes wore out quickly if they weren’t consumed by the deck, and, like kudzu in Mississippi, tapes and cases took over entire sections of the car as collections grew.
Once we caught on to MP3s, there was no turning back. All those audio cassettes were unceremoniously retired to the family yard sale, where they sat in the sun with nary a sniff of interest from even the most tech-challenged buyer.
MP3s offer clear advantages over the analog medium they replaced. Now we play music for hours at a stretch. We create custom play lists, search for favorite tracks, and take our music wherever we go. Best of all, we don’t have to lug around all those music titles on tape or disc, because MP3s are electronic files that can be stored on something as handy as a USB key.
For mobile music lovers, things have never been better. They take their music with them, and leave their discs at home. Parents of young children, however, continue to struggle with the problems caused by all those OTHER discs: the CDs and DVDs still required to run PC games and disc-based...