What has become obsolete this decade

Merry Christmas all. I bet most of you got a techie gift. This article that is most interesting from HuffingtonPost is about devices that have fallen into the obsolete category. We have all contributed to their obsolescence. Check it out here.

From whence the technology came. This is a picture of a pyramid switchboard in 1882. It was located in Richmond, Virginia. Now of course, all the switching is done through computers and we receive our calls through the always present cell phone. I've grown used to seeing people walking down the street or through the supermarket talking to themselves, actually through some hands-free device stuck in their ear. In years not so far ago, they would have been thought to be showing signs of mental distress. I sometimes think they actually are by being constantly attached to the device and surrendering any quiet time for themselves to perhaps think, or just enjoy solitary time for a few moments. Naw, I'm out of step, too old, but I still remember when I would give my eight hours to the job, and value the other sixteen hours as mine.

I just looked at an animated cartoon created and narrated by Mel Brooks, where he says the line, "I'm seventy-one I can talk if I want to, I'm gonna die," to another patron in the movie theater they are in. He of course is commenting on every scene loudly.

The point of that is I'm getting close to that age and I am quite aware of the passing of time. We are getting a new digital phone service through Time Warner so we took the opportunity to buy some new phones. We got the expandable kind, which were recommended by someone. I didn't even know they existed.

I ran across this picture of a candlestick phone and my mind immediately referenced the two types of phones as metaphors of passing time. When I was a tot candlesticks were the latest and greatest, now of course these expendables seem ultra modern to me. I doubt we will go to cell phones, just because we have no reason to have one because of our life style, but I don't doubt they would be fantastic if I was still working.

Ah, isn't technology great!

I was dreading today. We signed up for digital tier or some such thing meaning we will get many more channels, and digital telephone. The reason we did it is not without merit I think. I went in to pay our bill and I asked a question about a channel we did not have. DIY to be exact. She said we could add DIY and a whole bunch of other channels and digital phone service for five or six dollars less. It took a couple go throughs for me to fully comprehend more for less. I then called in the wife who was waiting patiently in the car. The nice lady then went through the whole thing for her a couple times because the wife doesn't understand the more for less thing either. Anyway it sounded good and we signed up.

As we were leaving, the wife and I looked at each other and thought and said the same thing. Oh my goodness, all those cables running in the back of our television from a VCR to a DVD reader, to a DVD recorder. We knew adding a new modem from the cable company would be a disaster, and if I had to take them out out and start over, I smelled disaster.

The installer comes in this morning bright and early and I explained my worry about the cables, he says "no problem". All I have to do is insert the cable from the street into the new modem and out to wherever it was previously and then I would be good to go.

NAW, it didn't work at all. Disaster had struck again. Granted I have invested a little heavily in recording devices, but I enjoy it and it keeps me off the streets and the bars, as some funny people say.

When it becomes too much for me of little skill and much fear of cable pulling and inserting, I call in my SISTER-IN-LAW, the hundred pound cable dynamo who somehow has no fear of the snake-like cable and has a clear sense of what they should be doing when she moves them around. She's a human schematic when it comes to cables. I can never quite see the whole picture. Well it's done. The operating instructions have changed somewhat and now I have four remotes, all of which have a job to do with one of the applications I want to achieve.

Oh we also now have HDTV. All we have to do is buy a new television set that will light up and be clear as a bell. Well not this week. Our current television is one of the last big floor model consoles put out by RCA. It's great and until it gives it's last gasp we will have to be content with whatever is the opposite of HDTV, low density? Whatever.