Five Technologies Our Kids Won’t Even Recognize
Posted in: kindle, Media Players, Retro, Today's Chili
By the time you lazy-bones, time-zone-challenged North Americans read this, the hot new Kindle Magnum should be all over the news. It has many hopes pinned upon it, from the ludicrously optimistic wishes of the newspaper industry to the rather worried expectations of the chiropractic industry (no heavy textbooks equals no spinal injuries to treat).
One thing is sure, though. Tech rolls in and out of fashion, and today the turnover is faster than ever. It won’t be long before many seemingly permanent gadgets disappear and become mere curiosities. Here are a few things that will seem as retro to the kids of tomorrow as the steam ship seems to us today.
VCR
Just last night I asked the Lady “When was the last time you taped a TV show?” It was, of course, years ago. In fact, the only reason she still has a VCR is because the TV remote is lost, so the VCR is effectively a giant channel changer.
Does anybody out there still have a video under their TV? You can’t rent movies, recording is both a pain and low, low quality and even buying a machine is tricky.
Death Rating 5/5
Books
This one will take a while, but paper books will eventually be the written equivalent of the vinyl record — loved, collected and sold in small numbers, but really just a niche market. The e-reader isn’t nearly ready enough yet, but if the Kindle Magnum (or DX, or whatever) makes its way into schools and colleges, the formative experience of reading will be electronic, not paper, and that will be the beginning of the end.
Death Rating 2/5
Letters
More paper, and more words. A letter that comes in the mail is so rare these days that we can probably declare it extinct, with a few unsubstantiated sightings every year — much like Bigfoot. It’s a shame — writing a letter was a longer, more considered affair than banging out an email, an act which itself already seems out-of-date in these days of the Twitter. And receiving one from a friend or loved one is magical.
This romantic, personal method of communication has also formed a good chunk of history, something that will be lost — can you imagine the collected e-mails of a famous person being published after their death?
Death Rating 5/5
The Newspaper
The news isn’t going anywhere. The opposite, in fact — it is now possible to consume news from an almost endless supply, from amateur video to local blogs to forward thinking magazine-based sites (like Wired.com, for example). But the newpaper? Dead. Or at least on life support, begging to be put out of its misery.
The reason is, of course, the internet. Gutenberg’s legacy might limp on a little longer, but the internet does the exact same job — dispersing information — much more efficiently. In fact, the jump from printed paper to electronic delivery makes the original move from handwriting to movable type look like a mere historical blip, and that isn’t to put down the printing press in any way at all.
Death Rating 5/5
The Desktop PC
What? Yes. The beige box is headed the way of the mainframe. Notebook computers already outsell desktops, and for good reason — the performance of a portable is close enough to the desktop for everyone except Pixar. More importantly, computing is so ubiquitous and essential that anyone who can afford a computer wants their own machine, and they want to take it with them. A laptop is no longer a luxury, it’s the norm.
But even these are going to disappear, or perhaps be consigned to remain, ironically, on the desktop. Take a look around you: What do you see in everybody’s hand? That’s it — a cellphone. And the cellphone is fast becoming the only computer most people will need. It will probably also be their book, their newspaper and their VCR.
Death Rating 4/5
See Also:
- Large-Screen Kindle Won’t Mean Squat if Apple Tablet Arrives …
- Will Anybody Buy The New Large-Format Kindle?
- Textbook Error: Large-Screen Kindle Photos Leaked
