Obsolescence

I was reading about the BBC Domesday Project recently, as most people do. It was a project that started in the 1980s with the aim of updating the Domesday Book for the modern day, using the newest technology, all whilst being assisted with funding from the EU and Philips. It seems like it was mostly an educational resource for children to upload content, and on the face of it isn't thus as remarkable as the original book that documented various people and places. 

Unfortunately, it's almost impossible to access the Domesday Project as was intended, because that newest technology is horrendously outdated nowadays. Laserdiscs are no longer used by many, let alone laserdisc players (try even finding a DVD drive in a laptop!), and the computers required are far from the sleek, easily overheating laptops most use nowadays. The project is thus a mark of its own time in two different ways - firstly, the content is outdated, and secondly, almost no one can actually access it. And that's only a brief overview of just how outdated the technology is - it came before the internet, compressed images, and home computers accessible to everyone after all.

I have quite a lot of old technology as well, though that depends on how old you think the technology is. A phone with a headphone jack designed by Silicon Valley executives is a rarity. Google advertised their first Pixel phone as having one, a quick jab at Apple, and then removed it anyways. Now all headphones are essentially meant to be wireless and Bluetooth connected, otherwise you get weaker audio that everyone can hear. I shouldn't complain about this too much, I was too young to get my first phone when Apple removed the jack and I've only been using headphones since last year, but they're still a curiosity even if it's only been seven years or so. 

The first photo to be taken with a phone is twenty-six years old today, a very basic screengrab of a baby. Since then, the technology has got extremely advanced, I can't really tell the difference between my phone photos and my camera photos. Obviously I'm not a professional, so there's that. But what was once revolutionary is now taken for granted. And that's only meant similar technologies are now seen as outdated even if they still work normally - every year there's a new iPhone, at most incorporating a new camera (mode), yet people still go and buy a new one. Some games have new editions every year, never truly changing yet still get bought by many.

No one stores data on discs anymore, it's almost always on the cloud. That's fine, until it's all wiped and you complain about the lack of a physical copy. I'll never truly experience burning photos onto a CD or copying music from a cassette, because hardly anyone uses them anymore and they've instead become icons of past decades. That said, cassette sales are on the up, which I find surprising. And yes, I do have a large collection of CDs, that's why they take up part of my album reviews. It's satisfying to think that I own Unknown Pleasures and can listen to it whenever I want to. Yes, Spotify has (almost) all albums for free, if you like ads, but it's unparalleled to the joy of owning something. I don't own Unknown Pleasures on Spotify, it's more like I'm renting it from the music landlord on an unlimited lease. Obviously I don't own the master tapes, but that's a whole other matter.

Technological obsolescence is a massive issue in society. Some companies like Microsoft take it to the extreme - it thinks 1900 was a leap year in Excel; you'd expect most to never need to use 1900 in their data, but in case someone needs to use it; in case someone running Windows 95 needs that spreadsheet; in case a bank requires it - 1900 will always be a leap year. All in the name of backwards compatibility. It's amusing on the face of it, but underlyingly critical. Many people still use Windows XP, even if the risk of an attack remains. And that's not even mentioning the Y2K problem, or the 2038 problem, when base-32 Unix time is rendered useless. 

All the companies are now shifting to base-64 time signatures, and will probably be using AI far more than now - part of me wonders whether it could be used to rectify the bugs that would otherwise make a spreadsheet irrelevant. If they don't act quickly enough, there will be an ever-growing cemetery of products forgotten about because no one cared enough to maintain them. I'm aware this blog is at risk of that - Blogger has been around for 25 years now, it's somewhat surprising Google haven't decided to pull the plug. I really hope they don't for obvious reasons. 

Some might think I'm advocating for technological hoarding, and perhaps I am. However, the true extent of technological obsolescence only gets greater every year, regardless of what we do.