Obsolete technology: 40 big losers

[Malevolence 6]

Here's an interesting read I came across the net. Are you still using any of the supposedly obsolete tech today?

 

1. Playing Video Games at an Arcade

 

Status: On life support

 

Once a favorite activity of geeks worldwide, going to the arcade to play video games began fading away in the mid-1990s, just as going to the arcade to play pinball had done a decade before. A few arcades survive, but the days of gamers lining up to toss quarters into Street Fighter or Mortal Kombat are long gone. It's easy to see why: The advent of advanced gaming systems allows you to experience the same action at home, minus the dungeon-like lighting, the deafening game noise, and the premature exhaustion of your lunch money for the week.

 

2. Running Out of Hard-Drive Space

 

Status: Deceased

 

With terabyte-size drives now selling for less than $70, hard drives that exceed your storage needs aren't exactly hard to come by these days. But remember when an 80MB drive was the pinnacle of luxury and a 1GB drive would have seemed as spacious as Carlsbad Caverns?

 

3. Getting a Busy Signal

 

Status: Nearly deceased

 

Thanks to advances in voicemail and call-waiting technology, you rarely hear that annoying broken tone any more. Unless, of course, you're voting for American Idol or listening to Pink Floyd.

 

4. Going on a "Blind" First Date

 

Status: Deceased

 

What with Google, dating sites, and a slew of social networks, it's not difficult to get to know a person digitally before choosing to interact with them in a brick-and-mortar environment. Heck, you might even get to know them intimately before ever meeting. Or instead of ever meeting.

 

5. Needing to Be 18 to Have Access to Porn

 

Status: Deceased

 

It may sound crazy, but in the old days a fella had to be 18 to get his hands on prurient materials--either that or have an easily bribable older brother. Or a friend with such a brother. Or a dad with an obvious stash. Not that I know anything about such matters.

 

6. Chatting With the SysOp

 

Status: Deceased

 

The SysOp--short for system administrator--was a figure of power beginning in the late 1970s and continuing into the early 1990s. As the creator and overlord of the local bulletin board system (BBS), the SysOp watched over the users who dialed into his pre-Internet electronic communication system. He chatted with visitors, kept the system running smoothly, and occasionally hit the disconnect button when someone remained logged in for too long.

 

7. Paying for Long Distance

 

Status: Nearly deceased

 

Once upon a time, people had to pay expensive per-minute fees for long distance. Then, the big bad cell phone came along and blew those charges away like a straw house. The end.

 

8. Getting Fuzzy TV Reception

 

Status: Deceased

 

When the United States flipped the switch on an all-digital broadcasting system this summer, it also effectively sent the fuzzy "white snow" to the graveyard. So long, annoying static; we always loathed you.

 

9. Hearing the Sound of a Modem Connecting

 

Status: Nearly deceased

 

How a familiar series of sounds could simultaneously be so grating and so gratifying is a mystery that man may never unlock. Jonesing for a fix? Try the 56K Modem Emulator.

 

10. Shooting Polaroids

 

Status: Nearly deceased

 

Polaroid plans to stop selling its signature instant film at the end of this year.

 

11. Waiting to Get Photos Developed

 

Status: Showing signs of illness

 

Though film-based cameras aren't completely gone, the advantages of digital snapshots --namely, that you can view a picture immediately after taking it and that you can discard bad shots at no cost--have certainly made traditional cameras far less common.

 

12. Typing on a Typewriter

 

Status: Nearly deceased

 

The clickity-clackity sound of the standard typewriter has quieted over the years. Unless you work in the New York City Police Department, which reportedly just signed a $1 million typewriter-purchasing contract.

 

13. Removing the Perforated Leader Strips From Continuous-Feed Paper Printouts

 

Status: Nearly deceased

 

Born in the 1970s, the dot matrix printer delivered low-quality printouts for nearly two full decades before inkjet technology offered an alternative that was slightly less hard on the eyes. The dot matrix printer will be remembered for its frequent paper jams; for its slow, noisy operation; and for the thin strips of perforated paper that you had to tear (carefully, so you didn't end up with a document that looked as though a tiny but voracious shrew had been sampling it) off the left and right sides of a printout once their work of keeping the paper properly aligned in the printer was done.

 

14. Having Easy-to-Remember TV Channel Numbers

 

Status: Nearly deceased

 

Fifty-seven channels and nothin' on? More like 557 channels (and still nothin' on). Try writing a catchy tune to that, Springsteen.

 

15. Checking Your Answering Machine

 

Status: Seriously ill

 

"Hi, you've reached the answering machine. I'm still around, but most people are now using dial-in voicemail instead of me. What a bunch of ungrateful little...BEEP!"

 

16. Enjoying Complete Privacy

 

Status: On life support

 

In the face of constant monitoring by Google and the many forms of GPS tracking in our lives (social networking shoe, anyone?), privacy has become a rare and precious commodity within the connected world. Speaking of which, that's a nice shirt you're wearing today.

 

17. Making Someone a Real Mix Tape

 

Status: Deceased

 

Web sites like Mixtape.com and Songza may attempt to fill the void, but the art of laboring over a custom-made mix tape tailored for a special occasion or a special person--as romanticized by John Cusack's character in High Fidelity--seems to have gone the way of electrical appliance repair and blacksmithing. It's a damn shame, too, because mix tapes made great gifts for dates (and by "great" I mean "potentially highly prized by the recipient and yet incredibly cheap and easy to assemble").

 

18. Wearing a Calculator Watch

 

Status: Deceased

 

Affectionately dubbed "the nerd watch," the calculator watch once served as a proud badge of a person's abiding amusement with mathematics--as diagnostic as a pocket protector or membership in the high school Slide Rule Club. Nowadays, the only sure way to ascertain an individual's true geek quotient is to test their Star Trek knowledge.

 

19. Seeing Pages and Pages of Phone Sex Ads in the Back of Free City Weeklies

 

Status: Showing signs of illness

 

Those naughty 900 numbers may still exist, but cybersex and the scandal-du-jour phenomenon of sexting have stolen most of the spotlight from landline lovin' these days. Not to mention that Craigslist and online events calendars have left free city weeklies looking pretty anorexic themselves. It's true that lying about yourself and your various physical characteristics is just as easy when you're talking on the phone as when you're typing on a keyboard--unless the lie is "I don't sound like Donald Duck"--but online the person you're communicating with can't hear that repellant note of desperation in your voice.

 

20. Using a Public Phone Booth

 

Status: On life support

 

Now that everyone and his ****atiel has a cell phone, public phone booths are getting tougher to track down. Translation: Superman is screwed.

 

For more, check out the link below.

 

http://www.networkworld.com/news/2009/081909-obsolete.html

[Doctor Destiny 41]

ehh, I'm sure it's meant to be humorous but of the first twenty, I see several still in use fairly commonly.

[Gben 20]

wow.. the story about cops using typewriters is true!

 

 

[Luk3us 63]

Yes, a large number of things in that list I see on a daily basis actually. Some things just die hard...

 

Case and point, Gben's story... But that is just cruel and unusual punishment imo. hahahha

[Sonic 296]

#29 says so much about how dumb and lazy people are getting these days.

 

29. Using Proper Grammar and Punctuation

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Status: On life support

 

txting and iming has made proper grammar seems kinda old skoo, dont u thnk? heres hoping 4 capitalization & punctuation 2 make a comeback in emails & other writing. the gr8 gatsby probly wuld hv been way less gr8 if it wuz written like this. lol

[Nmenth 291]

#29 says so much about how dumb and lazy people are getting these days.

Well at least they spelled grammar right... I've often seen people across the internet correcting other people's 'grammer'.

 

18. Wearing a Calculator Watch

Got one.

 

22. Storing Data on a Floppy Disk

Do.

 

23. Booting Up to a C:\ Prompt

Did recently when computer was misbehaving.

 

31. Flipping On an Incandescent Light Bulb

 

Status: On life support

 

More and more nations are saying so long to the traditional incandescent light bulb and encouraging their citizens to use relatively ecology-friendly, energy-saving bulbs. Cartoon characters getting "bright ideas" have yet to adapt, however.

First of all, unless they are talking about LEDs (which I doubt), fluorescent lights are not 'ecology-friendly'. Energy-saving, yes. Something you can dispose of in regular garbage without needing to worry about mercury contamination, no. Secondly, I've seen multiple cartoons use fluorescent bulbs for their ideas.

 

Most of those I never did, even when they were popular.

[Malevolence 6]

Ah yes incandescent light bulbs! Do you know it was used in C&C3's in Director Boyle's FMV sequences. Imagine in the year 2048...