On demand--a life that might have been

Katherine Mangu-Ward writes:

This is the first time in history that the ‘on-demand’ generation will be able to fully experience couch commerce by ordering pizza directly through their television set. You’ll see a television ad for Domino’s and you’ll click ‘I want it’ through your remote. In about 30 minutes, your pizza will show up at your door.

Kevin Drum is unimpressed:

Oh please. I worked for a video-on-demand company back in 2002, and even then "pizza on demand" was a cliche. It turns out that just about the first thing every shiny new broadband offering offers is....pizza delivery via your TV. I think the first time was 1994. It never went anywhere, though, because it turned out that ordering pizza by phone isn't really much of a hassle.

I don't have anything to add to this specifically. But it reminds me of an email exchange I had with my uncle about ten years ago. Unaware of the promise of streaming media, I told him I envisioned a future in which televisions, connected to the Internet, would be able to download self-destructing movie files from online video rental companies for a low price and play them back on embedded software. He, a successful business-and-computer man in his own right, told me that this was fantasy and that I'd be better off going to college and getting a soul-crushing cog-in-the-machine type job than spending my days fantasizing about get-rich-quick schemes.

True story.