Recently, I've noticed quite a few old things cross my path lately. For one, an old coffee maker, which - get this - has no buttons! This amused me to no end, and still does. I've no idea how old it actually is, I'm guessing it may be a 1960-80 model, but it still works quite well. I couldn't figure out how to make it work, but I've seen it in action. It has a switch on it, and a little mini-clock to set the timer.
Today, I noticed wall clocks, and I realized oddly, that there are a lot of inventions created in the 1900s that we don't really need anymore. Who needs wall clocks to tell the time when we have cell phones constantly at our side with the correct time? The same with digital clocks. It seems every piece of electronic device now has a clock, and I don't remember the last time I had to search around just to find out what time it was.
Rendering clocks, unnecessary.
I was watching my brother shread cheese today as well, and something about that made it seem incredibly old fashioned. Cheese is preshreaded now. We but it in bags, not blocks... well, unless you enjoy slaving away in the kitchen. I almost rendered blocks of cheese unnecessary, then I thought of my favored encheladas and marked that off my list of "Too Old". Shreaders/graters could be made invalid though, as we have all those nifty electronic gadgets to shread and gunk for us. So I added them to the list.
I had a laugh about those old dial-phones earlier with a friend of mine. Here's my post from Facebook - "Oh no, don't start on the old phones! I look at my shiny, touchscreen phone now and can't even begin to comtemplate how slow texting would be on one of them dial things!" Who, in the 1930s, would have thought there would be a such thing as a "Smartphone"?
How about the days when a TV was a TV, no HD (High Definition) or SD (Standard Definition) labling? SD TVs - and the SD movies that rode in with them are on the "Too Old" list.
Cameras that have film in them - like the kind my grandmother still uses (how amazed she must have been when she found out it was a waterproof camera!) - has also been added to my list. We use digital cameras now...
What's next? I'm quite eager to get rid of snail mail. The world isn't quite ready for that yet, but we recieve all our letters from family and friends, our bills, everything really, via email - for free nonetheless. I'll be happy to get rid of this form of communication from the castle ages. Get rid of the USPS blue boxes on the street corners. It's weird.
No books in print. This does bring a touch of sadness to me. But this is something that definitely will happen, and is fast approaching. It is in the interest to the environment - and saves on the bookshelf space issues as well. eReaders are here, and they're not leaving, the creation from B.C. is - print books.
What is ready to go now?
What can't you wait to see go extinct in the future?
