October 9, 2019
Autumn is always a time for reminiscing about things that were, and yet came to an end. I remember so many things in each moment, and yet, many take for granted how valuable their everyday memory is.
I remember in some of my earliest memories, the use of VCRs and Tape Cassettes was commonplace. That world has almost entirely vanished, although cassettes are having a brief revival in some music circles. Even fewer knew about the economic competition and struggle between Betamax and VHS. VHS ended up winning essentially because it did a better job on pricing and marketing rather than it being a superior product or technology. When Betamax folded, VHS became a monopoly while Betamax became obsolete.
The idea of obsolescence is actually quite old, as is the word, but it’s meaning and application have transformed throughout the centuries. In the 20th century, there was a man of considerable prestige, power, and pull in the business community, particularly in the industry of automobiles. He developed an idea he called “Planned Obsolescence.” While the concept is fairly deep and itself changed over time into new applications and meanings, at fullest development planned obsolescence was supposed to mean that technologies would be developed and adapted into new models continually to where it advanced so far that models that were brand new only a decade or so before would be rendered completely obsolete due to the technological advancements achieved in later models.
Today planned obsolescence seems to apply most notably to internet, computer, and smart phone technologies. Certain programs or operating systems are given a lifespan, and then rendered actually obsolete to the point of uselessness. A clear example is Apple, the computer company founded by Steve Jobs. Recently, after the iPhone 7, it was decided by the company that the new iPhones would no longer have a headphone jack, arguing that with Bluetooth and their new Lightning adapter, it was no longer needed. They’ve also changed their phone charger a number of times, such as when the iPhone 4 switched to a Lightning charger. One may even argue that the first iPhone and other Smart Phone emulators caused the traditional non-touchscreen based cell phones to become virtually obsolete in a manner of years.
Moore’s Law is becoming undone now as well. It was the long-standing rule with the development of computer technologies that each new subsequent series had to be double the previous capacity. Hence why we have 1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128, and even 256 GB thumb drives now instead of strange numbers like 3, 17, 23, 37 GB and so on. However, now we’re dealing with Terabytes (TB). Laptops often come with 500 GB to 1 TB, but people are wondering whether Moore’s Law should still remain applicable.
Even the term “phone” is somewhat obsolete when we take the meaning to be a landline based “telephone.” When a person considers all the things they use a smart phone / cell phone for, and all the amount of time one spends on it compared to how long one uses it to call someone, you realize the term “phone,” really is antiquated. GPS, text messages, social media, pictures and video, alarm clock, etc., we often use our phones now for things other than calling people to where we barely use it for making calls at all.
This was incomprehensible to me when, at seven years old in the first grade, I was taken to the school library and sat before a Mac computer (I didn’t know then that one of Apple or Steve Jobs’s ideas was to sell the computers at discounted prices to schools, which worked fabulously…I think, at least in the case of my school). Then I was told about the “internet” and “surfing the web,” and how it wasn’t much then - 1993 – but that in about 5-10 years it would change everything, the entire world. When we found out that most of the stuff on the internet at that point was databases, texts, and message chat rooms, and that it was very little to do with cool pictures or activities (I was particularly unimpressed that surfing the internet wasn’t nearly as exciting as surfing in real life!), we felt a lot less interested. Slowly but surely though, by high school we were using the internet to do research papers, and people had to connect to the internet based on their phone line. In those days, you couldn’t be on the internet and on a phone call at the same time (they did eventually make the technology to do that, but by then wireless had made dial up connection virtually obsolete). If you tried it, incoming calls were blocked by a busy signal, and outgoing calls would intercept the computer signals communicating, which involved a lot of strange high-pitched noises and sometimes ear-splitting screeches.
The point I’m getting to here is that My generation was the final generation to know what life was like before the internet took over everything. People of later times won’t really know about VCRs, about how we used to have to set them to tape a show, back then when they broadcasted shows at specific times and if you missed it, there was almost no other way to see it. Nowadays, you can buy a subscription to an internet viewing service for about $10 per month and watch almost any show at any time, without ads (if you pay to not have them); and if not, you can probably shop for it online and buy it using Amazon, eBay, Overstock, Craig’s List, Facebook, and virtually any other of dozens of online specialty retailers.
My generation is the last to grow up and know what America was like, and was aspiring to be like, before September 11th, 2001. Today America has become a very different place than before. I remember the effect that Columbine had on our community, because I grew up going to Jefferson County Public Schools in Lakewood, Colorado, a suburb of Denver. I was in 7th grade at Everett Middle School when it happened. So much changed, and it kept changing and getting worse after September 11th, when I was just starting high school at Wheat Ridge in 9th grade. We could only go to our lockers at certain designated times, we couldn’t wear backpacks around the school; we had to put them in the locker and could only take them out at the end of the day for going home. It was also in the midst of the idiotic and foolish Zero Tolerance policy nonsense that swept up schools in its wake. You couldn’t dare joke about shootings or terrorism. Today it’s almost become the only left we can do. More mass shootings have happened this year than days, and our society has not changed much in the last several years except it becoming normalized to the point where we do active shooter drills at school. To the point where Sol Pais was targeted as being a “credible threat,” to shoot up a school; only to have it end with her having committed suicide alone in the mountains well before they canceled all schools in DPS and Metro Denver; they just didn’t find her body until the next day.
In any case, I just felt like recognizing some of the changes I’ve seen in time, especially with the changing of the leaves outside. Tonight is supposed to be our first snow, but it’s nice and warm outside still. I think I’ll enjoy the warm sunshine, after all, it’s only when it’s gone that we end up really missing it.
See you all later. Peace and Prosperity to All.
- SZ