Thing is that some people use vinyl in different ways, cuing up with vinyl can be a lot faster for some people or indeed more natural. As for talk of auto beat matching, I really don't like that idea I have to say, will these contraptions play your set for you as well?!

The problem with decks or more than 2 decks at once is that it encourages the DJ to play the same sounding records for the whole set, and puts showmanship above the music in most cases... finding that happy medium is obviously desirable.

I definitely think people need to look for that alternative to a third deck, be it a laptop, CD deck, a microphone or whatever! And to introduce more elements other than a loop that's the same as on the decks. Many of the current techno icons for fast mixing don't play inspiring music, others pretend to play on a massive DJ set up when they are doing little more than pressing a few FX and playing the same record again and again... we have to move beyond that and make things (and the quality of musical delivery) genuinely more exciting again. There's a whole world of music out there, techno needs to be less incestuous.