UPDATE: So, in fooling around with my feeds this morning, I’m afraid that not a lot of people may have gotten this one. I’m trying to repost it, hopefully it’ll work.

So… I guess I’ll put off talking about videogames until next week. In the meantime, on to other topics. For example, the Nintendo DSi was released this week. Which got me thinking….

As Dilbert once famously said, “It’s hell being an early adopter.” And, historically, there’s been a lot of evidence for this. There’s a special kind of pain that one can experience, watching the gadget you’ve just paid out the nose for inevitably become less expensive, faster, and more useful. At best, early adopters seem unwise, while at worst, some Internet troglodyte who types faster than he thinks might uncharitably refer to them as foolish. Sadly, it’s just par for the course for the early adopter. Or, at least, it used to be.

Oh how things have changed. Being an early adopter used to mean having to go it alone into the wilds of some brave new technology, and feeling a little bit like a misunderstood prophet and a sucker, all at the same time. Once upon a time, having a shiny new toy to play with was one’s only solace whilst waiting for network effects to kick in — but not any more. Thanks, for the most part, to two very important factors.

The first of these has to do with marketing and positioning. These days, any major technology launch is bound to have such a hype machine behind it that demand will regularly exceed supply. Though it might seem counterintuitive to suggest that such frustrating inconveniences might have a positive psychological influence on consumers, these shortages have a pacifying effect on many prospective early adopters. The reality is that seeing long lines of campers parked in front of a store, seemingly desperate to possess the self-same object of one’s own technolust, reinforces the belief that the gizmo in question is worth buying. It tells us that the product is a winner, that it’s worth desiring, and that its eventual widespread adoption is totally assured. Basically, a medium-term shortage tells us, “This product will not be a repeat of the Betamax fiasco.” In fact, they have become such an integral part of successful product launches that many have accused companies of creating them on purpose.

The other factor sapping the angst from early-adoptership is, of course, the Internet. Even if demand exceeds supply, an awful lot of that demand is satisfied. Those fortunate enough to secure the awesome new gadget become members (briefly) of a giddy new class of elites; naturally, they find places to congregate on the Web, where they swap tales of their experiences with the Brand New Shiny, luxuriating in their common product-acquiring excellence. Instead of feeling isolated and concerned about the investment they’ve made, they celebrate their membership in the massive, teeming throng of firsters. (Regular readers of Lifehacker witnessed this phenomenon first-hand, when for a time it seemed that the site had become iPhone central.)

We’re not judging these processes, here. We don’t know if they are mostly good, bad, or just different from the way things used to be done. There’s a case to be made that consumer electronics launches are now so stage-managed, so calculated, that inferior technology can be marketed into prominence far beyond its actual value. But on the other hand, there’s also an argument that consumers are more informed about technology now than at any other time in history. It’s probably a wash.

Of course, there is a third possibility: We may be misapplying the term “early adopters”, here. After all, these gizmos are all basically toys. (Not that toys can’t change the world.) But, broadly speaking, new consumer electronics are not necessarily examples of new technologies. Somebody is always bound to combine winning technologies like email and mobile phones, or videogame and home theater equipment. Why not Research in Motion? Why not Sony? In a way, these things were inevitable: it’s just a gamble deciding who’ll have the better implementation and marketing.

There may be plenty of the old-style early adopters out there, out at the forefront, dealing with technologies that the rest of us will only find out about years down the road from now. As we sit here, fiddling about with the Internet, there’s somebody out there with an experimental shunt tucked somewhere in his or her body. Or someone else swallowing a new kind of pill as part of a medical trial somewhere. They’ve got things to worry about, often no one to commiserate with, and a hell of a lot more at stake than someone who paid $600 for an electronic plaything.

In any case, the romantic image of the early adopter as brave pioneer is almost certainly dead, in this day and age.