I’ve never been a gamer, but I’ve played Tetris. It’s an iconic game of descending interlocking blocked shapes—T’s, L’s and I’s that are falling from the sky—that if maneuvered together properly will zap a layer and free up space for more squares.
It’s a simple game, colorful, almost Zen-like. Her nana was Pong.
Resurrecting Tetris to illustrate the industry’s evolving IT platforms is appropriate, because embracing mobile technologies seems like a similar exercise—that of a panicked manipulation of incoming incongruous parts and the parallel evaporation of things no longer necessary.
I may have just written a sentence that belongs in a manifesto, but hear me out. The ingredients are the same. If you look at IT and its goals, integration is certainly one. Elimination of what’s unnecessary is another. Then too, imagine the anxiety of fielding stuff that’s constantly falling from the sky.
That’s not to say that everything falling from the sky can actually eliminate what needs to happen. Let’s talk cash registers. If people start using their phones like POS devices, you’d think the cash register would be a thing of the past. Yet from what folks are telling me, the process still has to occur, just not where we’re used to it happening today. Somewhere in the cloud via more direct bank links and mobile networks, transactions still have to settle out.
Then if we take the issue of legacy systems and payment methods such as cash and checks, which people and institutions still rely on, we see that old ways die hard.
I’m not suggesting retailers dodge new technologies. I say think like a gamer. As new challenges come, gamers embrace that anxiety-fueled exhilaration. You can see it in the way they toggle into that secret stash of gold or battle through an army of the living dead. The trick, I would imagine, is to accept the flashing “game over” in all its faux reality, knowing that it powers the rush.
Members help make our journalism possible. Become a CSP member today and unlock exclusive benefits, including unlimited access to all of our content. Sign up here.