The road to obsolescence

Nov. 14, 2007

Instant obsolescence may be a tactic to keep manufacturers like Microsoft in business, forcing us to continuously upgrade hard and software, but it irritates me. Just look at that next shopping insert from Office Max or Office Depot. Thirty years ago most of those products didn’t exist. Soon they won’t!
In 1983 when I bought my first computer, a 64k Cromemco C-10 compatible with the then standard CPM operating system, I chose it because it used double-sided, double density 5 1/4 inch floppy disks, a step up from the Apple I single-sided disks. The disks then cost four dollars apiece. When I wanted to add a spell checker from Random House, it came on an eight inch floppy that was already obsolete but accessible because, at the university, I knew where an eight inch drive still existed. Now that eight inch floppy disk is only suitable as an exhibit in a museum of old technology.
So are the 5 1/4 inch floppies. They were quickly superceded by 3 1/2 inch disks that weren’t so “floppy” as to be easily bent and damaged.
But those disks held only 1.4 megs of data. Now the new computers don’t even have drives that will
read them.
I bought a 250 meg zip drive for more portability and backup data storage, but those gadgets have been replaced by CD burners and the little flash drives, some of which hold as much as four gigabytes! Isn’t that the equivalent of thousands of those original 1.4 meg floppies?
But aside from the whirlwinds of computer technology, consider your television set. Probably one cause of American obesity is the remote control. When television sets first came out, homes sprouted ugly antennas, some with motors so you could turn them to tune in on various stations. Channel surfing consisted of getting up, crossing the room, and switching among three or four of a maximum thirteen channels. You got exercise! Using a remote, you just sit there with your snacks and vegetate. With coaxial cable service, the antennas became obsolete. Now with satellite feeds, rural houses have replaced those eight foot dish antennas with little ones small enough so campers can set them up in the remote forest and not miss their favorite soap opera.
Digital television is about to take over, making all those old TV sets obsolete. What a boon for the makers of converter boxes!
Remember CB radio? For awhile, citizens’ band radio was a huge fad. Everyone had one in the car and a “handle” to call themselves by if they talked to truckers on the Interstate (“Breaker, breaker, 1-9”). Now people have cell phones, and if you have an emergency CB radio tucked in the trunk, forget about it - nobody’s listening out there. I finally junked the CB I had installed on the boat. With a range of only five miles, and nobody listening anyway, it was useless.
When I shopped for a radio direction finder for the boat, I had a choice: buy one that did only that, or buy one that also had AM, FM, marine band, etc. Now the signals for radio direction finding have been shut down. LORAN was an improvement, but that’s being phased out, and nobody’s selling LORAN receivers anymore. If I’d bought a dedicated radio direction finder, it would be totally useless. The LORAN soon will be replaced by GPS.
The old receivers have no signals to receive.
I now have a basement full of equipment that will soon be so archaic that it’ll look like some gadget E.T. put together to call home, wherever that might be. My old eight inch floppy disk with the dictionary program can be shelved, along with that heavy wand that grandma used to beat the carpet with, and the ribbed, glass scrub board she used before the washing machine was invented.
Some people collect antique tools. I have among my gadgets an egg pricker (for boiling eggs without cracking them) and a boiled egg top cutter for people who can’t stand the sound of a spoon rapping on an egg shell. Oh, and an emergency CB radio. I sold the leather razor strop used to hone a cutthroat razor. Never owned such a razor. I think I still have a holder for razor blades, but no blades for it. I know a doctor who collects fountain pens. Remember fountain pens? They replaced the quill pen, but you don’t remember those either, or the pen knives used to sharpen them.
Some days I feel obsolete myself, just because I remember all this stuff.