TV is dying? Long live TV!

In the chaos of today’s media and technology brawl – iPod-vs. Zune, Google vs. Yahoo, Windows vs. Linux, Intel vs. AMD – we can declare one unlikely winner.

Standing tall in a field of new tech wonders, it’s a geezer technology that was invented in the 1920s and commercialized in the 1940s, and it’s still more powerful than anything created since. As you try to figure out where consumer infotech is going, and what it means for society, remember this big, central reality: People just want more television.

If you doubt it, look at today’s biggest news in tech. It continually centers on new ways to bring consumers the thing they crave above all else. Sony (Charts) flooded the recent Consumer Electronics Show with products that put Internet video on your TV set, as did almost every other consumer electronics company.

At the simultaneous Macworld Expo, Apple (Charts) chief Steve Jobs introduced Apple TV, which does the same thing. Such gadgets became imperative after the most significant tech phenomenon of 2006, the rocket-like rise of YouTube and its purchase by Google (Charts) – $1.6 billion for a site that brings you dog-on-a-skateboard videos and other mostly idiotic clips that people are watching many billions of times.