The pinball industry has not completely collapsed. But Stern is nothing compared with the WMS colossus. For a pinball fan, the fact that Stern is still cranking them out is hardly comforting. It's like hearing that even though Japan, Detroit, and Germany have stopped making cars, you can still drive a Yugo. Pinball's de facto demise reminds us that technology evolves until it reaches a cozy niche, like the ones forks or blue jeans occupy, or until it becomes extinct.
Machines redesign themselves through human beings.
Human culture exerts an overwhelming selection pressure on machine mutation. Most species of technology are governed by efficiency and utility and coevolve with the human desire to get stuff done. The game has no utilitarian value. Indeed, a pinball console is one of the most intricate machines that have evolved strictly for the amusement of man. As such, it has also become arguably the most colorful and bizarre species in the machine phylum - the platypus of technology.