Software should work, and talking about it needn't be boring

REG AD columnists Bingeing the boxed set of binary bafflement OPINION DVD is one of those technologies that dominated for barely a generation yet left a permanent cultural mark. It made high-quality video cheap enough for mass distribution, popularized the TV series boxed set, and encouraged its gluttonous consequence: binge viewing. Streaming and capacious storage have since pushed optical media toward irrelevance. There may no longer be a box, but the boxed-set mentality remains, and we still binge like Roman emperors. It is a genuinely new way of absorbing large quantities of information.Now it is time to recognize a further evolution: the bingeable tech conference. Streamed conferences are nothing new, but few reward being watched from beginning to end. They offer too many talks on too