Confucious might have been wise, but he didn't know the first thing about computer solitaire. In a culture obsessed with technology, the media have developed a smirky attitude toward low-tech. If you believe everything you read, books are doomed dinosaurs, at least in paper form. Newsprint is an archaic custom we will remember with bemused fondness just a few years from now. Yet it's a lot more complex than that.
Board games are a good example.
They're hanging on. People still buy them. Families still play them. Consider Monopoly, the granddaddy board game of them all. In 1999, sales increased 6 percent.