December 28, 2007

Progress Means Obsolescence

When was the last time you saw carbon paper? For you youngsters who have never heard of it, carbon paper was placed between two sheets of typing paper before inserting them into the typewriter. The keys striking the paper made an exact copy of whatever you were typing, complete with errors. The copy was smeary and hard to read, but it's all we had before there was a Kinko's on every corner.

Think of all the things that have become obsolete in our lifetime. Not only carbon paper, but typewriters as well. Fax machines were a miraculous invention. I remember being astounded that a paper from HERE could travel THERE though the phone line. That's how my Dad feels about sending pictures by e-mail-he doesn't quite believe it can happen.

The music industry has been through a lot of changes. I grew up with 45s (the first one I ever owned was Hayley Mills singing "Let's Get Together") and graduated to LPs when my allowance increased. Cassettes nearly killed off vinyl records, but they continue to survive even through the age of CDs and MP3s. The new media are certainly easier to use than a turntable with an arm and a needle that was always wearing down, but back then the music was played on real instruments, not synthesized by a computer.

Speaking of computers, there are dire predictions that the Internet will be the death of things I hold dear, like newspapers, books, handwritten letters, and libraries. I don't believe it will happen, but then I have a vested interest.

Many kitchen items from my childhood are dead or dying: coffee percolators, freezers that had to be defrosted, and saucers meant to hold a normal sized coffee cup have largely gone by the wayside.

AT&T has just announced the death of the pay phone. The first one appeared in 1878, only two years after Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone. Cell phones have killed the pay phone business, and soon Superman will have to find somewhere else to change. It's funny that Superman hasn't become obsolete with the birth of the hundreds of other superheroes. Hey wait--superheroes don't die, do they?

There are some thing that deserve to die, like baggy, slipping-down shorts as a fashion statement. Also, our national obsession with celebrities' personal lives and our dependence on petroleum products. While we're at it, let's kill off things that haven't happened yet, but that we know won't work, including walling off the border in Texas and requiring a U.S. passport to cross the street from Mexico or Canada.

Here are some more things I'd like to see as relics in a museum: disposable water bottles, guns, and perfume samples tucked into magazines. I'd like to live to see silicone breast implants as an odd trend from the distant past. I wouldn't mind if I never heard "thinking outside the box" ever again.

Maybe someday children will have to ask their parents what war is because it's obsolete.

What's on your list?