Silicon Valley Insider has a clever list of 21 things that became obsolete in the last decade, including a sometimes-interesting discussion of which of these are really obsolete (Is the land line gone? Chez Buce still has a land line, but why?)
One item I didn't notice on the list: the flash drive. I bought two the day before I discovered My Dropbox. Oh, and later Evernote.
And here's a candidate for shortest lifespan: installed dashboard GPS. Mrs. B got one on her new Toyota in 2004; we thought it was cool. Seems like two blinks of an eye and everybody had one on their pocket gadget.
[H/T: Carpe Diem.]
Update: Okay, so I open my Sunday paper this morning and there's a huge ad showcasing the dashboard GPS on the Cadillac Escalade. Does this mean I am behind the curve? Or they?
2 comments:
I love this post. Immediately sent it off to my kids. I still use the phonebook -- just used it today to get the number of a local take-out place. Tony wants to keep a landline (even if at the federally mandated minimum monthly charge plus the cost of calls actually made) cause he says in an emergency cells could be jammed. Don't know what e-fax is (something new to learn). When Tony was a graduate student, we lived in an apartment at F and 8th in Davis and couldn't afford a phone, so we used the pay phone three blocks away near where the Coop is today.
Another reason for land lines is that cell phones often splitz, fluttzer, blitzoff, go inanout, blank out, buzzoff, and otherwise make it nearly impossible to either carry on a conversation or speak with full confidence that the person on the other end of the line is hearing a word you're saying.
If God didn't mean us to have land lines, he wouldn't have given us wires. Or some such thing.
Yours Crankily,
The New York Crank
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