Recently, a frog species thought to be extinct, magically
appeared in an Israeli pond. These things seems to happen more often than you might
think.
In 2000, the pygmy tarsier, a mouse-sized animal last
spotted alive in 1921, was rediscovered. In 1894, a handful of specimens of the
Nelson’s small-eared shrew were found in southern Mexico. That was the last
time the shrew was seen alive for 109 years; until 2009, when three were found
in a forest.
Similarly, there are many ‘things’ from the world of
technology, which you might have thought are either extinct, or are on the
verge of disappearing, because you don’t see them around anymore.
One of the oldest technologies we know, simply refuses to go
away. Fax machines were invented in 1843. More than 170 years later, in 2012,
an astonishing 700,000 new fax
machines were sold in the US. Still going, and going, and going……and not
looking to be gone anytime soon. Heck, I had to buy two for my office this
year. Can’t seem to get some people off it.
Do you miss the clickty-clack of the dot-matrix printers? Do
you even remember them? Thought they had gone for good? Wrong again. More than
20,000 were also sold in 2012. I write this at an airport where I can actually
hear one in the distance because one of the most technologically advanced
industries, which buys planes for hundreds of millions of dollars, also insists
on still using dot-matrix printers at airport counters. Go figure.
Thought that vinyl records were extinct? Wrong. In 2012, 4.6
million of them were sold in the US. Someone has turntables and is playing
records in the millions. DJs, you say? That many?
In the high definition world of Blue-ray DVDs, some folks
are still watching their movies on VHS tapes. Not kidding. An astonishing 13
million blank VHS tapes were sold in the US in 2012. People are still recording
on VHS tapes? With what? VHS cameras? The ones which were so big and heavy to
lug around on your shoulder, and which then cost me hundreds of dollars in
chiropractor fees just to straighten me out? Someone out there still uses that
dinosaur?
Oh, and since we are on cameras, 35 million rolls of film
were sold in 2012. You read that right, millions! I thought Kodak was out of
that business and others were getting out of that business too. Apparently not
so fast. I cannot imagine that the film aficionados would be buying rolls of
film in such large quantities. So, who is? Time to fess up.
Sony stopped making 3 ½ inch floppies a while ago. Apparently,
there was no market for them. Wrong. Verbatim,
still sells millions in Europe and UK. Miss the 5 ¼ inch variety? That one must
surely be gone, right? Not a chance. Floppydisk.com will sell you 50 for $ 40. They
are double sided too (whatever that
means). If you feel very guilty, you can even buy recycled ones. Now all you
have to do is find a computer with a 5 ¼ inch floppy drive and you will be able
to access all 1.2 megabytes of data from your floppy! Why would you ever need anything
more (wasn’t that a quote from Bill Gates)?
With the wildfire growth of smartphones, one would have
thought that some industries would be strongly affected. Remember pagers? Anyone
still use pagers? Well, $ 350,000 worth of Pagers were sold in 2012. I still see
some old fashioned doctors holding onto the pagers they first used in medical
school. But boy, that’s still a lot of pagers.
Made a call at a pay phone lately? There are still 305,000 active
pay phones in the US? If you find a pay phone, take a picture. You may need it
to show your grandchildren. “Kids, to make a call, we had to hunt for something
called a ‘pay phone’. Then, we had to struggle to get coins out of our wallets,
because these special devices did not accept bank notes. And you could make a
call for a short period of time, before a voice started threatening to cut you
off if you didn’t put in more coins…..” I kicked a payphone for that.
And how about the GPS systems? With almost every smartphone
now able to provide GPS navigation, who is buying independent GPS systems?
Imagine having to buy one device for phone calls, another for texting, another
for navigation, another for the internet and so on. Then, you can hang all
these devices in your Home Depot handyman belt and go to work in a suit. People
still don’t know you can do all of this, and much more, from a single device?
If you pay attention to the younger generation, there are a couple
more vestiges of another older time (all puns intended), which are under
assault. Young folk don’t wear watches. They
get their time from their smartphones. And just when you thought watches would
soon disappear, along comes a game changer: the much rumored iWatch from Apple. Will all the kids start wearing an iWatch? Will
that become the new fad, the same way that oversize ceramic watches are a craze
with the ladies now? Recently, I actually saw a young lady on the metro train, check her time on her
iPhone, while carrying this large ceramic “clock” on her wrist. Presumably the clock was just
for show. Or she didn’t know how to tell analog time. Or both?
Gone you say? Not so fast. Some dead things, just don’t die.
