Speaker 1: Get in touch with technology with tex Stuff from dot Com. Hey, Aron,
Speaker 1: welcome to tech Stuff. I'm Jonathan Strickland, your beloved host,
Speaker 1: and today I've got a super special guest host live
Speaker 1: from c NET. It's I as Actar Hi, I as Hi.
Speaker 1: Jonathan is good to be here, is great to have
Speaker 1: you on. Now. I AS and I go way back.
Speaker 1: We met when you were working with Randall Bennett, and
Speaker 1: uh we became friends. So, just in the interest of
Speaker 1: full disclosure, I AS and I are friends. I know
Speaker 1: it's shocking, So any sarcastic barbs, I take it, Jonathan,
Speaker 1: or he throws back at me. We do that out
Speaker 1: of love, entire absolutely true, absolutely true. And today, Uh,
Speaker 1: you know, I always asked my guests if they have
Speaker 1: a preference for the topic they want to cover. I
Speaker 1: has actually looked through the list of articles and suggestions
Speaker 1: and things that I've been collecting for potential tech Stuff
Speaker 1: episodes and picked one. There was a listener suggestion listener
Speaker 1: named Jare shared a link to an article on Web
Speaker 1: designer Depot and it was all about technology that had
Speaker 1: gone obsolete, and Jared said, wouldn't it be great to
Speaker 1: cover an obsolete technology podcast? So We're going to look
Speaker 1: primarily at the technologies that appeared on that list, and
Speaker 1: then we're gonna kind of talk about, you know, what
Speaker 1: made them go obsolete. In a few cases, we might
Speaker 1: even debate if it is in fact obsolete. I think
Speaker 1: there's some that are on the list that might have
Speaker 1: been a little premature to say it's obsolete. When I
Speaker 1: think obsolete, I really think that it no one uses
Speaker 1: it anymore. It's been completely replaced by newer technology, you know,
Speaker 1: like the crossbow. Not a lot of people using those.
Speaker 1: What's not obsolete that that still has a function, So
Speaker 1: that they will argue at that planning, like, what is
Speaker 1: the true definition of that is it's just no one
Speaker 1: in the world ever uses again? Or is this just
Speaker 1: basically something that's been or its function has been traded
Speaker 1: in for another device. Well, I mean sure, a crossbost functional.
Speaker 1: I'm not saying it's not working. I'm just saying that,
Speaker 1: you know, they're okay, that you're right. We're gonna get
Speaker 1: into this throughout the entire episode. So, uh, spoiler alert,
Speaker 1: crossbow does not appear on the list, so we're not
Speaker 1: going to be covering that. However, I wanted to begin
Speaker 1: kind of where the list began, although I should also
Speaker 1: add these are not necessarily in the same order as
Speaker 1: they appeared on the article, because a lot of the
Speaker 1: technologies in the article were similar tech or at least
Speaker 1: we're technologies that fulfilled a similar role, and so I
Speaker 1: kind of grouped together quite a few of them. But
Speaker 1: in any case, the first one was super eight or
Speaker 1: eight millimeter film cameras, which the article referred to as
Speaker 1: video camera rus and I immediately got the giggles because
Speaker 1: film and video are two different things. Now, I as,
Speaker 1: have you ever actually used a film camera? Surprisingly, no,
Speaker 1: The only cameras I ever used when I was growing
Speaker 1: up were ones that used VHS tape, and that's it.
Speaker 1: I never I never had the experience of the super eight.
Speaker 1: I think a lot of people are familiar with it
Speaker 1: with the Wonder Years. That's what it looked like, kids.
Speaker 1: If you wanted what it looked like, this film actually
Speaker 1: going through but no sound, usually I think, yeah, exactly,
Speaker 1: it's a you know, you you had to record sounds
Speaker 1: separately if you wanted to have sound with your films,
Speaker 1: which meant that you would have to slate it. Slating
Speaker 1: of course for those who aren't familiar with the the
Speaker 1: film production world. Slating is where you have some sort
Speaker 1: of visual and audio Q that tells the producer how
Speaker 1: to line or the editor how to line up both
Speaker 1: the audio track and the video track. So if you've
Speaker 1: ever seen the little slapboards are often used to you know,
Speaker 1: whenever you're seeing a behind the scenes shot of a
Speaker 1: movie or it's just a television show where they've got
Speaker 1: that in there, as you know, usually it's when they're
Speaker 1: showing someone making a movie, that's what that's all about.
Speaker 1: Uh So, yeah, usually these were just silent films. It
Speaker 1: was interesting to me that eight millimeter film was actually
Speaker 1: sixteen millimeters wide. Uh. It was just that you would
Speaker 1: when you were shooting, it would record on one half
Speaker 1: of the film lengthwise, and then you would turn the
Speaker 1: cartridge upside down and reinstall it and then you could
Speaker 1: shoot on the other half of the film lengthwise. So
Speaker 1: that was what allowed you to double the amount of
Speaker 1: film that you had per cartridge. Um that's one of
Speaker 1: the things that is very different these days. Obviously, like
Speaker 1: we used to talk about film in terms of footage
Speaker 1: literally footage, how many feet of film did you shoot?
Speaker 1: And that's while we still use the term ntage today,
Speaker 1: and we still use the term film today. That's no
Speaker 1: longer the case. Now we're talking about how many bytes
Speaker 1: of data did it fill up? So I agree that
Speaker 1: this is obsolete in the sense that I don't think
Speaker 1: you're gonna find a lot of places offering super eight
Speaker 1: uh film cameras or even super eight film. But you
Speaker 1: can still find a few places. It's just really tricky,
Speaker 1: and it's also tricky to find places that can process
Speaker 1: that film because unlike video or digital film, you can't
Speaker 1: just view it immediately. You actually have to process the
Speaker 1: stuff you shoot in order for it to become viewable.
Speaker 1: So I'm I'm okay with this one being called obsolete.
Speaker 1: What's your opinion. It's definitely obsolete. Although I'm sure they're
Speaker 1: parts of Brooklyn where this is like the coolest thing
Speaker 1: that kids do or hitchers do. Um, There's there's no
Speaker 1: way I would see anybody using these things these days.
Speaker 1: And unless you're like some kind of crazy enthusiast. It's
Speaker 1: like somebody who who set but like a flash with
Speaker 1: that powder stuff that would go up flash that would
Speaker 1: seem to be very unusual. So I would think absolutely, absolutely, Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: unless you're a film student trying to make some sort
Speaker 1: of statement, I don't see this happening. Uh, it is interesting.
Speaker 1: Another little bit of trivia. The old super eight film
Speaker 1: could hold thirties six hundred frames worth of film, which
Speaker 1: amounts to just a few minutes, so two and a
Speaker 1: half minutes of footage at twenty four frames per second.
Speaker 1: If you change the frame rate, you could get more
Speaker 1: or fewer minutes of footage. Helt. But just imagine, you know,
Speaker 1: the fact that you are doing a take using a
Speaker 1: super eight film camera, No take could be longer than
Speaker 1: two and a half minutes. Obviously, that kind of pressure
Speaker 1: makes movie making take a lot more time, and it's
Speaker 1: a lot more stress I think. Um. Going along with
Speaker 1: this one is home movie projectors. Again not a huge surprise,
Speaker 1: because if you don't have the came rus to shoot
Speaker 1: the film, then why do you need something to show
Speaker 1: the film? Um? Yeah, I mean that's that's been gone forever.
Speaker 1: I mean I've seen these back. Actually I have seen
Speaker 1: this in school, back when they actually the real the
Speaker 1: reels would come in the wheel, this a V unit
Speaker 1: in and they'd have an old projector with this. But
Speaker 1: usually there were science things not necessarily home movies. But
Speaker 1: I'm just thinking back to the the how quick you'd
Speaker 1: have to shoot things. I'd imagine the stress levels would
Speaker 1: be very high for families. It's like, get the shot right,
Speaker 1: getting right, because we've got two and a half minutes
Speaker 1: and that's it. We're gonna have be happy here, that's it. Jimmy,
Speaker 1: you gotta you gotta at least give a a a
Speaker 1: false sense of happiness to everyone back home, and we
Speaker 1: get one shot. That's it. It's not like the days
Speaker 1: where we got to to retry everything right. If you know,
Speaker 1: these days, if they take a picture with like a
Speaker 1: smartphone and you don't like it, you just delete it
Speaker 1: and do it again. That was not the case in
Speaker 1: the old film days. Well yeah, these these projectors have
Speaker 1: been largely replaced with DVRs, DVD players, Blu ray players, VCRs,
Speaker 1: even in some homes, and then some people have digital projectors,
Speaker 1: so kind of a spiritual successor to the old real
Speaker 1: home projector, but it works on a very different technology. Now,
Speaker 1: the next one I remember from my childhood. I didn't
Speaker 1: own a Beta Max machine, but I remember the the
Speaker 1: cassette wars between Beta Max and VHS and those are
Speaker 1: the next two on the list. Now, this is the
Speaker 1: early video market for the consumer. Video had been used
Speaker 1: in professional capacity for quite some year, for quite a
Speaker 1: few years, I should say, before it ever hit the
Speaker 1: consumer market. And then you had the VHS versus Beta
Speaker 1: Max battle. Um. The main differences between the two well one, uh,
Speaker 1: Beta Max was made by Sony and v HS was
Speaker 1: uh that came out from our c A I believe,
Speaker 1: and uh, so you had a format war that way.
Speaker 1: But Beta Max also could record in a slightly higher
Speaker 1: resolution and was limited to at least for the longest time,
Speaker 1: to one hour long cassettes for home recording, whereas VHS
Speaker 1: didn't have that limitation. You could get longer recording VHS
Speaker 1: tapes and that gave it an advantage. Also, Beta Max
Speaker 1: tended to be more expensive than VHS, so this was
Speaker 1: a battle that we'd see play out again with Blu
Speaker 1: Ray versus h D DVD. That's sort of a fight
Speaker 1: that broke out, um. And in many ways the two
Speaker 1: format wars are very similar to each other. So if
Speaker 1: you remember the old h D DVD war, then this
Speaker 1: story is really pretty close. Uh. The big difference being
Speaker 1: that I didn't go to the c e S where
Speaker 1: Beta Max pulled out of the show at the last minute,
Speaker 1: but that did go to the c e S when
Speaker 1: HD DVD suddenly decided not to show up, uh the
Speaker 1: day of the show opening. Yeah, this is Sony's like revenge.
Speaker 1: At least the Blu Ray one was because when it
Speaker 1: came to Beta Max, the quality was there. It was
Speaker 1: higher quality, like you mentioned, and a lot of people
Speaker 1: thought that quality went out, but VHS was I'm just
Speaker 1: much cheaper and you could have longer films, and I
Speaker 1: believe there was the adoption of pornography on VHS, so
Speaker 1: that kind of led the way at times. But son
Speaker 1: you got to win finally with the Blu Ray. I
Speaker 1: think the last major player they boughtut I want to
Speaker 1: say it's Warner Brothers, but they basically paid a truckload
Speaker 1: of money and ensured their victory in the home theater space. Yeah, VHS,
Speaker 1: while I would say it's pretty, you know, it's it's
Speaker 1: mostly dead and the Princess Bride sense of things. There's
Speaker 1: still plenty of companies that are offering up vhs like VCRs,
Speaker 1: but they're usually combo VCRs. There VCRs that are packaged
Speaker 1: as like a DVD or Blu Ray, even a Blu
Speaker 1: Ray vcr UM. But there still are some out there,
Speaker 1: and in fact, some movies are still being released on VHS,
Speaker 1: but it's almost always a gimmick, like The Horror Anthology
Speaker 1: VHS two was released on VHS cassette, but that again
Speaker 1: was kind of a one off, like aren't we clever
Speaker 1: sort of thing. Yeah, you can tell someone has gone
Speaker 1: to the obsolete point when you see the prices start
Speaker 1: taking on things like VCRs, the playback machines. They start
Speaker 1: going down and they start decreasing to this point and
Speaker 1: then like they're practically giving them away for free, and
Speaker 1: then they start slowly increasing the price because so few
Speaker 1: companies are making it. Because if you look up a
Speaker 1: VHS player now, it's not as cheap as it would
Speaker 1: have been back when if the market was flooded. So
Speaker 1: I don't know if it's it's not dead, it's definitely
Speaker 1: actually obsolete when it comes to video technology. It doesn't
Speaker 1: have the quality, it doesn't have the amount of I mean,
Speaker 1: I wouldn't say bit rape if you're not in the resolution.
Speaker 1: When it comes to this, you're not gonna have the
Speaker 1: same amount of audio coming out of this this technology.
Speaker 1: So it's definitely uh, it should be on its one
Speaker 1: way out, but it's that it won't just die. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think obsolutely. It's a fine word because, like you
Speaker 1: were saying, I as I think, absolutely does not necessarily
Speaker 1: mean it has been white from the face of the planet.
Speaker 1: It really just means that. I mean, if you were
Speaker 1: going out today to buy a brand new home entertainment center,
Speaker 1: you probably wouldn't think of a VCR as a necessary component.
Speaker 1: But what about a LaserDisc player. I loved when the
Speaker 1: LaserDisc came out. I was I saw it. It came
Speaker 1: out in the store. I saw this massive box and
Speaker 1: get these record size, shiny platters, and then I begged
Speaker 1: my folks to buy me one. They bought me a
Speaker 1: laser disc player. I came home with it and then
Speaker 1: I'm like, wait, how do you record on this thing?
Speaker 1: And they said it doesn't record, and I go, we're
Speaker 1: taking this back to service merchandise right now. So at
Speaker 1: a lasers player in my ask for all of three
Speaker 1: days because I was not happy about it, and my
Speaker 1: folks were very nice and they were very happy to
Speaker 1: get what I believed to be a four hundred and
Speaker 1: thirty dollar credit back from this store because that was
Speaker 1: really really expensive and they were very nice enough to
Speaker 1: get for me, So they get to uh, they got
Speaker 1: to enjoy the stork about it later. That's so hilarious
Speaker 1: that that you owned a LaserDisc for all of half
Speaker 1: a week. Uh. Yeah, I didn't have a LaserDisc player
Speaker 1: at all. I did grow up in the era of
Speaker 1: the the home video you know, wars everything from the
Speaker 1: Beta Max to VHS. We had a VHS VCR, not
Speaker 1: a Beta Max. We didn't have a LaserDisc player. We
Speaker 1: did have a totally different obsolete technology that I'll mentioned
Speaker 1: towards the end of the show, but it's it was.
Speaker 1: It didn't make the list that we were talking about
Speaker 1: right now, the online list. LaserDisc players had a much
Speaker 1: higher quality than vhs when it comes to resolution and sound.
Speaker 1: They were kind of the predacess sirs to DVDs. Uh.
Speaker 1: They were and you know, really the first optical based
Speaker 1: home media's format. And it also brought in the era
Speaker 1: of full motion video because there were laser disc arcade
Speaker 1: machines that um used laser disc footage as the means
Speaker 1: of showing off the game, like like Dragon's Layer is
Speaker 1: the big example, where you know, at certain moments within
Speaker 1: Dragon's Layer, you can make a decision and the character
Speaker 1: would go and either succeed or fail based on that decision.
Speaker 1: But everything has already been prerecorded, nothing was being rendered
Speaker 1: at the time that you were playing. You were really
Speaker 1: just unlocking various sequences. And that was the limitation of
Speaker 1: the laser disc format. It couldn't do anything beyond that.
Speaker 1: But on the other hand, people who own laser discs
Speaker 1: love the quality of the picture and the sound. I
Speaker 1: remember going to parties with people who had laser displayers.
Speaker 1: They would always have, you know, one of the movies
Speaker 1: on in the background, and it it was it just
Speaker 1: blew away anything that was on vhs. You didn't have
Speaker 1: that tracking artifact that would go across when you know
Speaker 1: your tape is not quite right, you have to fix
Speaker 1: the alignment so that you don't have the static or
Speaker 1: whatever on there. That was never a problem, but a
Speaker 1: LaserDisc ultimately didn't catch on in the consumer market. UH
Speaker 1: to a wide extent. It had a very dedicated core
Speaker 1: of followers, but it eventually lost out to things like DVDs,
Speaker 1: UH and blue rays later on. So by two thousand
Speaker 1: in the United States. Um, they were pretty much gone.
Speaker 1: So sad to say that it never really caught on
Speaker 1: in a big way, but it did kind of pave
Speaker 1: the ground for the following types of optical based media
Speaker 1: like DVDs and blue ray. Uh. Then we've got a
Speaker 1: whole bunch that I grouped together because they are similar.
Speaker 1: There's the phonograph, turntables, vinyl records, transistor radios, boom boxes,
Speaker 1: the Sony Walkman, and the Sony Discman. So some of
Speaker 1: these I could argue are technically not obsolete. Uh, they
Speaker 1: might be niche markets. Um. In one case, the Sony Walkman,
Speaker 1: the brand still exists, so I guess you could argue
Speaker 1: it's not the same piece of technology. That's not exactly
Speaker 1: the same they The Walkman used to be a cassette player.
Speaker 1: For those of you don't remember. Cassettes are like with
Speaker 1: analog way of getting audio to you, and when the
Speaker 1: tape itself would have an issue, you have to get
Speaker 1: a pencil and kind of rewind the actual tape. Yep.
Speaker 1: So there's there's a whole generation that people have no
Speaker 1: idea you know what I'm talking about. But when you
Speaker 1: had these cassettes, you'd want to walk around with them,
Speaker 1: and unlike something that that succeeded them, like the discman,
Speaker 1: you didn't have a lot of skipping problems. You could
Speaker 1: run around with the tape and there was no real
Speaker 1: issue there, but you did have to deal with the
Speaker 1: destruction and whear and tear of the actual tape. And
Speaker 1: I remember when I had a discman at one point. Uh,
Speaker 1: it was great. Once they they invented anti skip technology
Speaker 1: was which basically just reading ahead and having the audio
Speaker 1: set to go in case of a skip because optical
Speaker 1: media not exactly designed to be ran around with back
Speaker 1: first came out. Yeah, it had to buffer that audio
Speaker 1: so that should you encounter a bump, it could continue
Speaker 1: to play seamlessly. And like you were saying, the cassette
Speaker 1: didn't have that problem, you have other issues, Like there
Speaker 1: were times where maybe the tape could get caught on
Speaker 1: something and unwind from the cassette and that was a
Speaker 1: huge headache. Uh. You know, obviously it's a magnetic storage medium,
Speaker 1: so if you were to work near i don't know,
Speaker 1: super conductors or something, you might end up having some
Speaker 1: issues on your music. But but I, you know, I
Speaker 1: certainly was a big fan of the cassette. Back in
Speaker 1: the day, it was one of the easier ways to
Speaker 1: have your music be portable, and the Walkman specifically made
Speaker 1: that easy. As for things like, well, the phonograph, Sure,
Speaker 1: the phonographs obsolete. It's been obsolete for ages. I don't
Speaker 1: even know how it made the list. It's kind of
Speaker 1: like saying, you know, uh, I don't know, like the
Speaker 1: horse and buggy is obsolete. Well, yes, that that is obvious. Turntables,
Speaker 1: I'm I don't know. There again, it's like a niche market.
Speaker 1: But there are lots of music artists out there who
Speaker 1: will release their music on vinyl and you play it
Speaker 1: on turntables. I'm sure there's some people who collect that
Speaker 1: kind of stuff, even if they don't have the device
Speaker 1: to play the media on, but they're just a collector.
Speaker 1: But I know that turntables and vinyl certainly still have
Speaker 1: a place. I mean, DJ's alone, make sure that that
Speaker 1: doesn't die out completely. Would you go so far as
Speaker 1: to say that turntables and vinyl records are actually obsolete,
Speaker 1: definitely obsolete at all, because their replacements would be something
Speaker 1: like digital music, and they're The big claim is that
Speaker 1: there is some kind of analog warmth that you get
Speaker 1: that you just can't reproduce on it digital medium. And
Speaker 1: so as long as long as as there's gonna be music,
Speaker 1: if there's still gonna be vinyl, because you know, of
Speaker 1: all the things that try to replace Vinyl, the fact
Speaker 1: that it keeps coming back or just refuses to die,
Speaker 1: I don't think it's it's ready to be called obsolete,
Speaker 1: because then why why don't we other why don't we
Speaker 1: ever see other analog audio take off as well as
Speaker 1: vinyl does. I'm not really sure, yeah, I mean, the
Speaker 1: only thing I can think of is that the cassette
Speaker 1: tapes have the magnetic media tend to have a hiss
Speaker 1: behind it, which people say that obviously takes away from
Speaker 1: the fidelity of the recording, whereas vinyl doesn't have a hiss,
Speaker 1: assuming that your equipment is clean and the record is unblemished,
Speaker 1: I mean, obviously, if your record has wear and tear,
Speaker 1: there's going to be some pops and scratches in it.
Speaker 1: Some people say that actually adds character to the recording,
Speaker 1: and uh, for a for a full generation, that was
Speaker 1: the way people were used to music, and it sounded
Speaker 1: weird to not have those kind of pops and scratches
Speaker 1: in it. So yeah, I agree with you. I don't
Speaker 1: think that one's obsolutely I would say that that one
Speaker 1: that one probably does not merit inclusion on the list. Uh.
Speaker 1: Cassette tape recorders and cassette tapes are actually the next
Speaker 1: one that we're listed in the the article, and I
Speaker 1: can see why. I mean, obviously, the music, like the
Speaker 1: prerecorded music stuff. The music industry going out to buy
Speaker 1: an album has largely and almost totally abandoned the cassette format,
Speaker 1: with with a little one off exceptions, things that are
Speaker 1: really more of a marketing gimmick than anything else. For example,
Speaker 1: the Guardians of the Galaxy soundtrack They're Awesome mix tape
Speaker 1: is going to be released or has been released out
Speaker 1: on cassette tape, but that's because the cassette tape played
Speaker 1: such an important part in the movie. It's really more
Speaker 1: movie memorabilia, I would say, than an actual musical album
Speaker 1: in that sense. Yeah, cassette tapes, obviously I was talking
Speaker 1: about before. My big life with cassette tapes was recording
Speaker 1: stuff off the radio. I'm sure you've done this too.
Speaker 1: It's like you got your boom box, You're waiting for it.
Speaker 1: You're waiting for a song because there was no way
Speaker 1: to get audio very easily. You just have to wait
Speaker 1: around for it to come in through the airwaves. Have
Speaker 1: your cassette tapes, and like back when we're talking about
Speaker 1: the Walkman, nothing more. Nothing would cause a panic, like
Speaker 1: seeing that tape getting stuck between the heads and you're like, Okay,
Speaker 1: did you get twisted? Isn't busted inside? Uh? When it
Speaker 1: comes to the cassette tapes, I remember just having a
Speaker 1: ton of them. I liked how small they were. That
Speaker 1: was something that was a big nice thing to have
Speaker 1: a portability. But I think definitely obsoustely at this point. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I used to have cases of these things. My my
Speaker 1: college roommate and I had dozens of mix tapes, including
Speaker 1: tapes where we were doing just dumb things like we
Speaker 1: each had vinyl record collections, including singles and full albums,
Speaker 1: so we once did a mix tape that was all
Speaker 1: vinyl albums played at the wrong speed, so we would
Speaker 1: have singles played too slowly, and we have full albums
Speaker 1: played too quickly, and we thought that was the funniest
Speaker 1: thing in the world. Because our senses of humor had uh,
Speaker 1: stayed at the eight year old level. I have since
Speaker 1: gone up to twelve years old in my sense of humor,
Speaker 1: So there's progress there. Did you have a tape player
Speaker 1: that variable speed so you could actually listen to it
Speaker 1: back normally if you wanted to, or you just thought,
Speaker 1: that's it, one speed, this is how it's going to be.
Speaker 1: It was one speed. Yeah, we I remember distinctly like
Speaker 1: we had um Anarchy in the UK played super slow,
Speaker 1: which sounded more like a rob zombie cover of the
Speaker 1: Sex Pistols made it really really scary and ominous. But
Speaker 1: we also had a super fast version of Comfortably Numb
Speaker 1: and hearing Alvin and the Chipmunks cover Pink Floyd was amazing.
Speaker 1: So but we yeah, once once we recorded it, that's
Speaker 1: the speed it was gonna be. We didn't have a
Speaker 1: variable speed tape player. Now, all of this so you know,
Speaker 1: by two thousand one, those cassette tapes made up less
Speaker 1: than five of music sales, and so pretty much you
Speaker 1: don't find them for prerecorded music. You can still find
Speaker 1: blank cassette tapes because apparently there are some people out
Speaker 1: there who are still using them to record stuff, but
Speaker 1: as for like an actual album release. It's incredibly rare
Speaker 1: except for the the random one off. However, the next
Speaker 1: one on the list eight tracks, I think we could
Speaker 1: just say is obsolute without even you know, any debate
Speaker 1: on the subject. It was obsolete during the era of
Speaker 1: the cassette tape. Yeah, I think that's just like enough said,
Speaker 1: is an eight track And if you if you're miss
Speaker 1: hearing me, you're thinking the Sony a track, that's not
Speaker 1: what I'm talking about. The eight track cassette tape that
Speaker 1: just kind of when went away. It was supposed to be
Speaker 1: be higher quality audio then you'd be getting from other methods,
Speaker 1: but it was these giant cartridges. They kind of look
Speaker 1: like atry cartridges, at least that's where I remember them
Speaker 1: to be. I don't think I've ever been in a
Speaker 1: car that had an eight track player, have you? I
Speaker 1: have been in a car that had an eight track player.
Speaker 1: My my family did not own one. We always had
Speaker 1: just the A M and then later the a UM
Speaker 1: FM radio, but we never had an eight track player.
Speaker 1: Eight track players had a lot of limitations. For one, uh,
Speaker 1: you couldn't rewind a cartridge. You could only play it forward. Now,
Speaker 1: some eight track players had a fast forward so if
Speaker 1: you really wanted to get to the other side of it,
Speaker 1: you could fast forward the the cassette, or if you
Speaker 1: wanted to hear a song again, you could eject it,
Speaker 1: turn it over, fast forward to what you think is
Speaker 1: the beginning of the song you wanted to listen to again,
Speaker 1: eject it, turn it over again, put it back in
Speaker 1: the player, and push play and hope that you guessed correctly. Um,
Speaker 1: you could also fast forward, or rather, when you did
Speaker 1: fast forward, most of these players would cut the audio,
Speaker 1: so you're just fast forwarding. You wouldn't actually be listening
Speaker 1: to the stuff played super fast, so you wouldn't be
Speaker 1: able to listen to music played at the wrong speed.
Speaker 1: But yeah, this format died pretty much in the seven knees.
Speaker 1: So I was a kid in the seventies, but I
Speaker 1: was a very young kid in the seventies and I
Speaker 1: have no real memory of eight tracks. It was only
Speaker 1: when I was writing in someone's car that dated back
Speaker 1: to that era that I ever saw an eight track player.
Speaker 1: So we never had one in my family. There should be, uh,
Speaker 1: I don't think there's any adapters that have like an
Speaker 1: eight track to Bluetooth adapters or adapter. Your CD player
Speaker 1: not a thing. Causette Cassett's still kind of live in cars.
Speaker 1: The last car I owned had a cassette deck in it,
Speaker 1: and that car was from two thousand and four, so like, yeah,
Speaker 1: so they still had a tape deck and it was
Speaker 1: had the ability at least for me, It's like, Okay,
Speaker 1: I'll get the adapter. But I've never seen an eight
Speaker 1: track to c D or eight track to Bluetooth adapter,
Speaker 1: so definitely dead. Well, I I haven't even seen, like
Speaker 1: it's been a while since I've seen a car that
Speaker 1: had a CD player in it, much less eight track
Speaker 1: or cassette player. But again, might be that bias creeping
Speaker 1: in where I just I tend to hang out in
Speaker 1: the other podcaster cars and we're all gadget breaks, so
Speaker 1: we tend to get the the various systems that are
Speaker 1: all digital. Well, how about real to real tape? You
Speaker 1: think that one's still a contender or is that one obsolete?
Speaker 1: It's not dead. I know this because I think one
Speaker 1: of the last Food Fighter albums was recorded on real
Speaker 1: too real. It was because they wanted total analog, they
Speaker 1: wanted to not use pro tools. So there's some certain
Speaker 1: bands that still use this to record, and the Food
Speaker 1: Fighters are kind of a big band, so and so
Speaker 1: that's it's it's unusual that somebody would choose to do that.
Speaker 1: And I just remembered back with the cassette tapes, I
Speaker 1: us have a four track machine so I could record
Speaker 1: music on different tracks, and that was my second big
Speaker 1: cassette moment because I was totally into CDs at that point.
Speaker 1: But real to real tape, this is another like kind
Speaker 1: of niche kind of thing that people would be trying
Speaker 1: only if you want to have the analog sound from
Speaker 1: the very beginning, because there's no other real reason to
Speaker 1: do it, because it's kind of limited. Yeah, it's it's
Speaker 1: really for one, thing is just really big, right, I mean,
Speaker 1: it's it's a bulky medium, and so you have to
Speaker 1: have a lot of physical space to store it. So
Speaker 1: that alone makes it less attractive than a lot of
Speaker 1: other alternatives. Granted, you still have again this this sort
Speaker 1: of perception that the sound quality on the medium is
Speaker 1: fundamentally different from other types of media, and that might
Speaker 1: that might actually be true. There are some things that
Speaker 1: come up during recording that you know, you wouldn't hear
Speaker 1: if you were actually in the room. While the recording
Speaker 1: was being made, it wouldn't be something you could perceive,
Speaker 1: but on the recording you get these kind of distortions
Speaker 1: and interference of various frequencies as they're being recorded, and
Speaker 1: that becomes part of the song or whatever is being
Speaker 1: recorded onto that medium, which is kind of cool. It's
Speaker 1: an idea that the the media itself is playing a
Speaker 1: part in the quality of the song or whatever else
Speaker 1: it is that you're trying to set down. And I
Speaker 1: think that's really interesting. But I don't I think outside
Speaker 1: of that realm that you're talking about, I s it's
Speaker 1: not terribly uh um popular or well known. There's some
Speaker 1: I know there's some computer systems that still use a
Speaker 1: real too real type system to do backups, just because
Speaker 1: it's a legacy system and that's what they have to
Speaker 1: work with. But I don't think that's terribly common either.
Speaker 1: I agree that it's not quite obsolete, but it's definitely
Speaker 1: very niche. It's very it's very useful if you're making
Speaker 1: like a period sci fi movie, because if you have
Speaker 1: a large computer, they almost always had two real to
Speaker 1: real decks constantly going never knew what it was doing,
Speaker 1: was always in the background with the flashing lights. So
Speaker 1: if you're wondering what those giant discs are, that would
Speaker 1: be real too, real in a lot of these sixties
Speaker 1: sci fi movies, and a lot of twilight zones as well.
Speaker 1: It makes me think of airplane too. These lights are
Speaker 1: blinking out of sequence. We'll get them to blink in sequence.
Speaker 1: It's pretty much where that goes. The next one is
Speaker 1: is another one that I don't think really fits is obsolete.
Speaker 1: It's ham radio. I think at this point I would
Speaker 1: argue that the the author of the piece is perhaps
Speaker 1: equating something that is not terribly popular with something that
Speaker 1: is obsolete. But ham radio, amateur radio is still a thing, right,
Speaker 1: This isn't It didn't people didn't just stop. There are
Speaker 1: quite a few amateur radio operators out there. Yeah this,
Speaker 1: I know, it's not dead. I used to work in
Speaker 1: a place where this is very big with a certain
Speaker 1: group of people. But it's definitely not something that is
Speaker 1: marketed towards the general consumer or anything. So like like
Speaker 1: we talked about with other devices, things that if we
Speaker 1: want to think about it as will the normal person
Speaker 1: be like, Yeah, I'm totally into this and this is
Speaker 1: what I will choose to you was over a cell
Speaker 1: phone or whatever would be Uh, this thing is obsolete
Speaker 1: and that kind of not people Not many people are
Speaker 1: using it that way. Yeah, I guess yeah, from that perspective,
Speaker 1: certainly they're not using it as a primary communication tool.
Speaker 1: But it's one of those things also that I don't
Speaker 1: think was ever popular enough for you to say that
Speaker 1: it's been replaced by something else. It was always kind
Speaker 1: of this hobbyist, uh market, and not something that you
Speaker 1: would see, you know, it's not I don't think the
Speaker 1: average home a few decades ago had a ham radio
Speaker 1: sitting around in it. It was one of those things
Speaker 1: that people who had a very specific kind of interest.
Speaker 1: That's those were the homes you founded in. Otherwise it
Speaker 1: was it was just not there. So I don't really
Speaker 1: think of it as obsolete. I just think of it as,
Speaker 1: you know, kind of again very niche. But the next one, telegraph,
Speaker 1: I feel it's pretty obsolete. Yeah, I mean it's pretty
Speaker 1: cool and if you don't again legraphs um. I think
Speaker 1: the last time I saw one on Madman, that was
Speaker 1: the last time I saw one. It was an ad
Speaker 1: campaign for it and it was a pretty good episode.
Speaker 1: But it's basically a piece of trivia in your head
Speaker 1: when it comes is when a telegraph is because you
Speaker 1: just text people nowadays, right, Yeah, I mean there's so
Speaker 1: much stuff that's replaced it the telegraph system. I mean,
Speaker 1: it was all introduced in the nineteenth centuries, so the
Speaker 1: eighteen hundreds. Um, it really got running towards the end
Speaker 1: of the eighteen hundreds and wireless telegraphy came in. And
Speaker 1: the thing that surprised me was when I was doing
Speaker 1: some research just looking into this, was how long the
Speaker 1: telegram business lasted in the United States. Western Union shut
Speaker 1: down their telegraph service in two thousand and six. I
Speaker 1: would have imagined that to have been much earlier. With
Speaker 1: things like, um, uh, just the telephone system, computers, you've
Speaker 1: got cell phones. The smartphone really wasn't a thing in
Speaker 1: consumer markets in two thousand six. You'd have to wait
Speaker 1: till two thousand seven when the iPhone came out for
Speaker 1: that to really happen. But still it was amazing that
Speaker 1: it stuck around that long. Uh. And then you have
Speaker 1: telex machines, which were teleprinters. Uh. Telex actually itself is
Speaker 1: the name of the network. It's not the name of
Speaker 1: the device, but the network allowed printers that had been
Speaker 1: hooked up to it to print text based messages that
Speaker 1: have been received over the network. So um, it's not
Speaker 1: entirely obsolete either. It's still being used in maritime functions.
Speaker 1: In fact, it's a requirement in the Global Maritime Distress
Speaker 1: and Safety System, mainly because other systems could fail. This
Speaker 1: is like a backup system for communication. It's not necessarily
Speaker 1: something that would be relied upon as the primary source
Speaker 1: for communication, but still an important network. I can see
Speaker 1: why you'd say obsolete, however, because it's not like it's
Speaker 1: something that the average person is going to ever come
Speaker 1: into contact with. I'm actually generally unfamiliar with telex machines
Speaker 1: other than like I guess the Simpsons referenced at times Burns.
Speaker 1: Mr Burns does retalex, but that's about it. Like I
Speaker 1: I don't know much about it at all other than
Speaker 1: what you just said. Yeah, yeah, I mean I've never
Speaker 1: I've never personally encountered one. You know. My parents wouldn't
Speaker 1: let me into the telex room at home, so yeah,
Speaker 1: they kept in that cabinet and we weren't allowed to
Speaker 1: touch with the fancy soaps and the beautiful dishes. Actually,
Speaker 1: I have to correct you, as they kept me in
Speaker 1: the cabinet. Everything else was outside of it. That's much
Speaker 1: more efficient. My folks should have done the same thing.
Speaker 1: They just locked us in the rooms. They should just
Speaker 1: lost us in a tiny one Harry Potter. Potter was
Speaker 1: largely based on my background. You and your owls man.
Speaker 1: Real problem. Yeah, yeah, well, okay, let's let's not reveal
Speaker 1: my entire personal life to the internet. Let's move on
Speaker 1: to to Whang calculators. This was the Yeah, I remember
Speaker 1: Whang computers, but only because I remember people talking about
Speaker 1: it after the computer company had already faded away, and
Speaker 1: it's you know, it's one of those things where the
Speaker 1: more juvenile among us joke about it, Wanging computers. But
Speaker 1: Wang Laboratories was founded in nineteen fifty one, and the
Speaker 1: Wang Loki two or l o c I two was
Speaker 1: the first desktop calculator that the company offered in nineteen
Speaker 1: sixty five. They were enormous. Have you ever seen one
Speaker 1: of these? I have not? Okay, well, you know, like
Speaker 1: the really big um office telephones, the ones that have
Speaker 1: lots of different bells and whistles to them, not just
Speaker 1: your average ones, the ones that take up a good
Speaker 1: quarter of a desk. If you've ever seen one of those,
Speaker 1: that's kind of the size of a weighing desktop calculator.
Speaker 1: These things were enormous. They weren't It's not like a
Speaker 1: pocket calculator. It was a big piece of machinery. Uh,
Speaker 1: and these really have become Obsoletely, you can get a
Speaker 1: basic scientific calculator that could do everything that the Wang
Speaker 1: calculator could do, and you can put it in your pocket,
Speaker 1: whereas these things, again were huge. Uh. The company Wang
Speaker 1: Laboratories went bankrupt in two and it was eventually acquired
Speaker 1: by a company called g Tronics in and then essentially dissolved.
Speaker 1: They folded it into their other divisions and it no
Speaker 1: longer exists as its own entity anymore. It's kind of sad,
Speaker 1: but yeah, the I can't disagree that an enormous desktop
Speaker 1: calculator is now obsolete. Definitely. Now I am looking, okay,
Speaker 1: I found some pictures of this thing. It looks kind
Speaker 1: of like a word processor. Yeah, it's just it is enormous.
Speaker 1: This is um it's it's a computer. That's what it is. Exactly.
Speaker 1: Does it computes things? Yeah? Yeah, specifically bath that's really
Speaker 1: what it computes yea various like scientific calculator type um functionality.
Speaker 1: But yeah, it was. It was big now. Granted, at
Speaker 1: the time it was a very advanced piece of machinery.
Speaker 1: It's easy for us to kind of joke about it now,
Speaker 1: but at the time it was it was cutting edge.
Speaker 1: So it shows that we've gone a long way where
Speaker 1: you can hold something in the palm of your hand
Speaker 1: that can do everything that machine can do. Plus you
Speaker 1: can just carry it around with you, and you know,
Speaker 1: depending on the device, you could connect to the Internet.
Speaker 1: So that's something that that that machine never could have done. Uh.
Speaker 1: Analog telephones is our next one. Uh. The landline service
Speaker 1: has been declining steadily since the mid two thousand's, and
Speaker 1: digital systems are a huge, huge deal. I've heard that
Speaker 1: the FCC will allow phone companies to stop supporting analog
Speaker 1: lines by and that by we would expect them all
Speaker 1: to be gone. Uh. I asked, do you still have
Speaker 1: a landline? No, I've moved to avoid box. Uh. Landlines
Speaker 1: are They're really helpful for things like, UH nine one
Speaker 1: one calls because you actually can of the dispatch, can
Speaker 1: actually see where you are with that kind of thing.
Speaker 1: But these days I believe you can set your home
Speaker 1: location with E nin one one, so at least you
Speaker 1: have that kind of functionality built back in. Although analog
Speaker 1: just regular landlines in general just they run with no
Speaker 1: power since this power always going through them. Is there
Speaker 1: a digital version of that that exists where you can
Speaker 1: have power going to it all the time, you know?
Speaker 1: I don't. I've never heard of one. I've always seen
Speaker 1: the digital lines having to get supplemental power, so I
Speaker 1: don't know. I also don't have a landline. I really
Speaker 1: like solely on cell phones now. Um. In fact, I
Speaker 1: haven't had a landline and probably a decade. UM. It's
Speaker 1: it's been a really long time since I bothered to
Speaker 1: to maintain one. I know there are a lot of
Speaker 1: people who advocate that you should keep one like a
Speaker 1: just a phone just plugged in somewhere, even if you
Speaker 1: don't have a regular phone line, just in case of
Speaker 1: an emergency. UM. I know a lot of my friends
Speaker 1: out in San Francisco do because that's part of their
Speaker 1: earthquake preparedness kit. But here in Georgia, I don't have
Speaker 1: to worry about that. We get if we get an earthquake,
Speaker 1: it's likely not strong enough for us to notice it, So, um,
Speaker 1: I haven't bothered with it, But yeah, I can see
Speaker 1: why this one's on the obsolete list. It's still again,
Speaker 1: if you live in an area where you have to
Speaker 1: worry about various kinds of power outages or whatever, often
Speaker 1: the phone line, not all the time, but often the
Speaker 1: phone line can remain unaffected by that depending on the
Speaker 1: nature of the outage, and it can be a really
Speaker 1: useful tool. I just it's just one that I never
Speaker 1: really think of. How about p d A S. Did
Speaker 1: you ever have a personal digital assistant? I did. I
Speaker 1: had a Handspring Visor, and uh, if you guys don't
Speaker 1: know what that's like, it's kind of like a smartphone
Speaker 1: without the phone connectivity. But the Visor was show because
Speaker 1: it had the ability to have something called springboards in
Speaker 1: the back, kind of like a game Boy cartridge slot.
Speaker 1: You'd remove this little plastic placeholder you put in something
Speaker 1: like a physician's dictionary, dictionary if you wanted, or encyclopedia,
Speaker 1: that is. You could even attach a cell phone attachment.
Speaker 1: So I actually my first cell phone was a Visor phone,
Speaker 1: which anytime I handed to other people to use, they
Speaker 1: did not understand that they had to use a stylist
Speaker 1: or touch the screen to actually dial a number. And
Speaker 1: they were like, what about all the face grease. You're
Speaker 1: putting your face against the screen. That's just really weird.
Speaker 1: This is back in like two thousand and two, I
Speaker 1: want to say, so this is a long time ago.
Speaker 1: That concept was very foreign back then. Were you a
Speaker 1: p D A guy? I was not. I never had one.
Speaker 1: I I was actually a late adopter of cell phones. Um,
Speaker 1: but once I did adopted, I never looked back. So
Speaker 1: I went from not having any kind of personal digital assistant,
Speaker 1: nothing like that. I had a computer at home, and
Speaker 1: I had a landline at home, and that was it.
Speaker 1: You know, if I was out and about, there was
Speaker 1: no getting in touch with me and I if I
Speaker 1: needed to call somebody, I had better have that phone
Speaker 1: number memorized because that was the only way I was
Speaker 1: going to get it, unless they happened to be in
Speaker 1: the phone book. Yeah, we used to have phone books. Boy,
Speaker 1: I remember those two. Yeah, I still get them, even
Speaker 1: though I have put myself on the do not send
Speaker 1: list multiple times. But yeah, it's that is certainly one
Speaker 1: of those things the Internet has helped replace. But yeah,
Speaker 1: I never I never carried one around and by the
Speaker 1: time I would have cell phones were a thing, and
Speaker 1: they were. They had enough basic functionality for me to
Speaker 1: have a list of contacts with the people that I
Speaker 1: would call more frequently than anyone else. Um and I
Speaker 1: never really worried about using them to keep schedules because uh,
Speaker 1: no one ever wanted me to go to anything, so
Speaker 1: I didn't need it. Um. Yeah, I was more of
Speaker 1: a second gen p d A guy. I just realized
Speaker 1: that my dad used to have the radio shack Rolodex,
Speaker 1: like the large one that you would pair with a
Speaker 1: smaller one with I R so you can actually send
Speaker 1: it over. And these little the small ones like a
Speaker 1: clamshell little device. It kind of looked like a business
Speaker 1: card holder had very very like the spongy little keys
Speaker 1: on it. It It kind of like rubber membrane that you
Speaker 1: push and actually input stuff. But if you didn't want
Speaker 1: to do that, you could use the larger Rolodex one
Speaker 1: that had much larger keyboard. It looked like a child's
Speaker 1: cashier kind of toy if you wanted to remember that
Speaker 1: look like. And then for myself not only have the
Speaker 1: visor phone back in college, I had some p d
Speaker 1: A with a stowaway keyboard, because back when I was
Speaker 1: in college, kids didn't use laptops for anything, and we
Speaker 1: didn't really have We didn't have WiFi. I'm not even
Speaker 1: making this up. There's no WiFi and cell signals are
Speaker 1: basically for the really wealthy. So I would download my mail,
Speaker 1: I'd be between classes, type out the responses, and then
Speaker 1: go back to my dorm and then sink it back
Speaker 1: to send out my messages. That was a long time ago,
Speaker 1: and that is really scary. Yeah, I skipped all that.
Speaker 1: And see the thing is that these truly are obsolete.
Speaker 1: The smartphone has completely negated any need for the p
Speaker 1: d A. The smartphone can do everything that the PDA
Speaker 1: could do and more so. Uh, these days, I can't
Speaker 1: even imagine not having my smartphone with me. In fact,
Speaker 1: I start to go through withdrawal if I haven't, if
Speaker 1: I've left it behind. If I happened to leave the
Speaker 1: house and I realized I left the smartphone back at
Speaker 1: the house, it starts to gna me, which really is
Speaker 1: more of an issue with my psychology than anything else.
Speaker 1: But uh, you know, I have to force myself to
Speaker 1: go on vacations where I don't have cell service or
Speaker 1: WiFi so that I can just get away from it.
Speaker 1: It's funny because it's something that I never used until
Speaker 1: the smartphone came along, Like I never used the p
Speaker 1: d A or anything like that, and now I can't
Speaker 1: imagine not using it. I think. I think that speaks
Speaker 1: highly of the technology and not so highly for me. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you are definitely somebody we should all pity so with you.
Speaker 1: That's fair. So what about pagers? Did you ever have
Speaker 1: one of those? I really wanted one when I was
Speaker 1: a kid, but my folks were like, no, not getting
Speaker 1: a pager, and they were right because who would be
Speaker 1: calling me? It was like an eighth grade. There's no
Speaker 1: reason for an eighth period to have pages. But my
Speaker 1: friends had them, and I'm like, wow, that's so cool.
Speaker 1: Who's calling you? And you'd have these cool messages, like
Speaker 1: the special number code because you couldn't text yet, so
Speaker 1: they'd be like, I know, four one one means there's
Speaker 1: some information, or there's nine one one means there's some
Speaker 1: kind of emergency. I better go home or whatever it was,
Speaker 1: or you call those people back. But I did not
Speaker 1: personally have a pager because I was deemed not popular enough.
Speaker 1: I didn't have a pager either, and I never got one,
Speaker 1: mainly because I couldn't imagine a scenario where someone needs
Speaker 1: to get in touch with me that badly, where if
Speaker 1: I wasn't next to my phone, uh, that it would
Speaker 1: be something necessary, you know, that they would need to
Speaker 1: go to that extra step to get my attention. I
Speaker 1: figured my phone and my answering machine were enough to
Speaker 1: take care of all of that. Uh. And again, now
Speaker 1: that we've got cell phones and smartphones, pages are largely obsolete,
Speaker 1: So I agree with it being on this list. What
Speaker 1: about portable television? Well, I'm being reminded in my head
Speaker 1: that pages aren't dead. I mean, doctors use them, and
Speaker 1: there there are other versions that are available, like when
Speaker 1: you go to a restaurant and they give you a
Speaker 1: pager and still technically a pager. So so everybody wants
Speaker 1: them writing to go. They're not dead. They're not dead.
Speaker 1: We just think that, you know, these days, you wouldn't
Speaker 1: be going to the store to get a pager. Right.
Speaker 1: What was the the other item you just mentioned, portable TVs?
Speaker 1: Oh man, I I wanted them to work. These are
Speaker 1: definitely this is obsolute, like crazy, because there's enough streaming services.
Speaker 1: You can get things on your phones. But I had
Speaker 1: a Sony Watchman. Okay, do you know what that is? Yes, Okay,
Speaker 1: So if folks I don't know, it was this portable
Speaker 1: television had about two point two inch screen. It was
Speaker 1: like a brick. It was pretty large, had a telescoping antenna.
Speaker 1: It was black and white. I had a mono speaker.
Speaker 1: And because the old days before the transition, UH, pretty
Speaker 1: much getting a signal on the go kind of impossible.
Speaker 1: So if you were in a moving car it was useless.
Speaker 1: You basically couldn't watch anything. It was really about. You
Speaker 1: could bring it with you and you can stop and
Speaker 1: look at it, and it just it didn't do a
Speaker 1: very good job when it came to that. Battery life
Speaker 1: was terrible, the audio was terrible. And then something like
Speaker 1: recently there was a version of this that came back
Speaker 1: for cell phones called media Flow or flow TV. They
Speaker 1: had their own spectrum. Once the analog to digital conversion
Speaker 1: happened with television waves here in the US, they were
Speaker 1: all these free frequencies. So they had bought this frequency
Speaker 1: and it was gonna be here. People are gonna have
Speaker 1: sort of cable like TV on their phones, it folded
Speaker 1: within a couple of years. Apparently nobody really wants to
Speaker 1: watch live TV on the go. I'm not sure why
Speaker 1: that is, but that's what apparently has been happening. I
Speaker 1: think I think live TV in general has really taken
Speaker 1: a hit. I mean, we've had so many ways of
Speaker 1: watching stuff on demand whenever we are ready to watch it,
Speaker 1: you know, so that we are not held to the
Speaker 1: schedule of a television station or a channel or anything
Speaker 1: like that. I think that's really kind of filtered out
Speaker 1: through the entire spectrum of platforms that you would get
Speaker 1: television on. Granted, there's still shows that I will set
Speaker 1: myself down so that I can watch it when it
Speaker 1: comes on, but there I think there are only two
Speaker 1: that I do that for right now, and only one
Speaker 1: of them is what I like. I watch a show
Speaker 1: I don't like when it comes on ahead? Which one?
Speaker 1: Is it? Sleepy hollow? Oh? You just watched as you
Speaker 1: can criticize it? Is that right? That's yeah, it's mostly
Speaker 1: so I can feel superior by criticizing the historical inaccuracies
Speaker 1: and ridiculous plot holes in that show. I think my
Speaker 1: favorite I think you tweeted about a scientific inaccuracy, you
Speaker 1: do my it seems like, yeah, you can let go
Speaker 1: of the anachronisms, you can let go of the license
Speaker 1: is being taken. But when they can't get basic science
Speaker 1: right at times, that's your Your tweet was quite hilarious. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I go a little bonkers with that. Yeah. I can
Speaker 1: handle the fact that there is a headless horseman walking around.
Speaker 1: But if you get basic science wrong by trying to
Speaker 1: create gunpowder by just lighting sulfur on fire, then I
Speaker 1: really flip my lid. But listeners of tech stuff, no,
Speaker 1: we did a full episode about fireworks and I explained
Speaker 1: how to make fire gunpowder essentially, and they know you
Speaker 1: can't just light sulfur on fire and have it explode
Speaker 1: and be gunpowder unless you live in the world of
Speaker 1: sleepy Hollow. I guess I'm getting off track, all right.
Speaker 1: Our next one is another batch which I think we
Speaker 1: can just kind of dismiss out of hand, which is
Speaker 1: um led watches, TV watches, the Saco wrist, computer calculator watches.
Speaker 1: Basically all the little gimmick watches and watches in general
Speaker 1: have really taken a hit. I mean, they're largely used
Speaker 1: as an accessory now as jewelry because almost all of
Speaker 1: us have some other device on our person that has
Speaker 1: the time on it, so they're not as necessary. In fact, Uh,
Speaker 1: it's gotten to the point where even the smart watch,
Speaker 1: which is still trying to make headway into the consumer market,
Speaker 1: is having some issues because a lot of people ultimately say, well,
Speaker 1: why do I need this? So I definitely agree that
Speaker 1: these watches and watch form factors are all suitably on
Speaker 1: the obsolete list. Yeah, and I think there's a need
Speaker 1: for him other than fashion. I have my own wristwatch
Speaker 1: that i'd like to wear, and the big reason why
Speaker 1: I wear it is because it's a kinetic watch. That
Speaker 1: technology has made watches a lot more palatable to me
Speaker 1: because then they never die. That's the big thing holding back.
Speaker 1: I think a lot of these things, like the spot
Speaker 1: watch back when Microsoft tried it, or like the smart
Speaker 1: watches that are coming out in this generation, is the
Speaker 1: fact that you have to charge something every day or
Speaker 1: it could die. And this is not the device you
Speaker 1: want to die. You actually want to know the time.
Speaker 1: It's relatively important because you know your life might have
Speaker 1: a schedule. So uh, these gimmick watches, yeah, nobody, nobody
Speaker 1: really needs to have like a time X watch you
Speaker 1: hold up to a cr team monitor that flashes a
Speaker 1: signal that will give you the data. That was a thing.
Speaker 1: I love that idea because it was so ridiculous and
Speaker 1: and when I saw the demo it looked like it
Speaker 1: was going to induce seizures because the cr team monitor flickering.
Speaker 1: Which was brilliant idea of getting data from one device
Speaker 1: to another. It wasn't the greatest in execution. Definitely great curiosity.
Speaker 1: I loved these devices when they came out, but they
Speaker 1: just didn't hit it. It was a very creative approach
Speaker 1: to trying to solve a problem, just not one that
Speaker 1: was necessarily effective. Um. Yeah, and our our next one
Speaker 1: would be CRT. You it's good that you mentioned the
Speaker 1: CRT monitor because CRT monitors and CRT televisions are on
Speaker 1: the list now. These are cathode ray tube displays. They
Speaker 1: had a vacuum tube and an electron gun. The gun
Speaker 1: fired electrons at fluorescent screens and that would create the images.
Speaker 1: So uh, these were that This was like the main
Speaker 1: kind of television before you got all the great technologies
Speaker 1: like l C, D, l E ED plasma stuff that
Speaker 1: allowed us to have these super slim flat form factors.
Speaker 1: Everything before that was CRT uh, And by two thousand
Speaker 1: that technology was pretty much on the way out. And
Speaker 1: it's you know, depending on the store you go into,
Speaker 1: you may not even be able to find a CRT
Speaker 1: monitor or display in the door. Um, did you do?
Speaker 1: You have a CRT and e CRT displays laying around?
Speaker 1: Not anymore. I used to have some CRT suh. You can.
Speaker 1: You can probably pick up c RT s free on
Speaker 1: the streets to New York. I've seen them outside. They're
Speaker 1: just literally by the garbage and says free on it
Speaker 1: says working. But I mean, nobody's really using these devices anymore.
Speaker 1: It's like the idea of a thirty two inch television,
Speaker 1: Like that's really tiny nowadays. But if you're in a
Speaker 1: thirty two inch television and it's a CRT, you're talking
Speaker 1: about a good one hundred to a hundred and fifty
Speaker 1: pounds of television. So it wasn't like, hey, you wanted
Speaker 1: this TV upstairs, It's like, what is it? It's a
Speaker 1: thirty two in CRT. No, that is noting downstairs. Yeah
Speaker 1: that's gonna be the basement TV. Yeah that yeah, yeah, No,
Speaker 1: I I have some sitting in storage that I just
Speaker 1: never got rid of. I need to find a an
Speaker 1: electronics recycling program and put them through that way, because
Speaker 1: like a lot of electronics, CRT s can have some
Speaker 1: some materials in them that are toxic, and so you
Speaker 1: don't want to just throw it out if you can
Speaker 1: avoid it. Um, it's better to find a way of
Speaker 1: of taking that to a recycling area where they can
Speaker 1: they can strip it of anything that's useful and dispose
Speaker 1: of the toxic stuff in a responsible manner. But yeah,
Speaker 1: I was happy to get away from the CRT technology.
Speaker 1: It's just it's so bulky, it's inefficient to it. It
Speaker 1: uses up more electricity than other types of displays, so uh,
Speaker 1: you you can only get to a certain size before
Speaker 1: it just got too heavy to be practical and it
Speaker 1: was an electricity hog. So yeah, I was glad to
Speaker 1: see this on the list. I definitely agree that it's obsolete.
Speaker 1: I've seen, you know, some CRT s still being used
Speaker 1: in places, but usually it's because it's part of a
Speaker 1: legacy system. Once again, like I've seen c rt s
Speaker 1: in some um air traffic control towers, but these are
Speaker 1: usually older air traffic control towers that have it upgraded
Speaker 1: their systems yet, and they're relying on eighty pound CRT s.
Speaker 1: And I know this because I had to move them
Speaker 1: once upon a time. The syrtes were fascinating subject for
Speaker 1: me in school. They were in a physics textbook. They
Speaker 1: explained how how things worked when it comes to this. Uh.
Speaker 1: They mentioned the electronic gun that was in the back shooting. Basically,
Speaker 1: he's drawing the picture in line by line. It's happening
Speaker 1: so quickly, and it was it was drawing the screen
Speaker 1: like like the first line and the third line and
Speaker 1: the fifth and then it would fill in the even numbers.
Speaker 1: And that's why you have something called interlacing. So it's
Speaker 1: just interesting to see that this stuff actually does permeate
Speaker 1: and cause issues like even today with some DVDs. If
Speaker 1: you see interlacing, it's based on this idea of how
Speaker 1: these televisions were drawing the screen for you. It's the
Speaker 1: picture for you, which I was. I was fascinating because
Speaker 1: whoever thought this is the way we're gonna show a
Speaker 1: moving image is let's just fire a gun really fast,
Speaker 1: back and forth. Pretty freaking interesting. But yeah, the c
Speaker 1: RT they fully for my back and yours. Uh is
Speaker 1: no longer a modern day issue, except when you move
Speaker 1: eighty pound ones like you do. Yeah, that was not
Speaker 1: a fun job. I'm glad I don't have that job anymore.
Speaker 1: So we've got lots more to get through. But what
Speaker 1: I'm thinking, I AS, if you're amenable to it, is
Speaker 1: wrapping up this episode and then maybe chatting on a
Speaker 1: second one about the remaining ones. And uh, I just
Speaker 1: have a discussion about any kinds of technology that we
Speaker 1: think are obsolete that should have made the list but didn't.
Speaker 1: That would be excellent. I'd love that all right. Well,
Speaker 1: for our listeners who might not be familiar with your
Speaker 1: work or where to find you, what would be the
Speaker 1: best way to track down I as actor, you know,
Speaker 1: in a totally friendly kind of way, not a scary
Speaker 1: Liam Neeson kind of way. Right, So, if you want
Speaker 1: to be able to find me on the internet, the
Speaker 1: easiest way is to find me on Twitter. My husue
Speaker 1: name is i As I y A Z. I got
Speaker 1: it early, so I'm usually just i AS on the Internet.
Speaker 1: If you want to find me, like at where I work,
Speaker 1: check see net dot com. I have penn some things
Speaker 1: every now and then I do some videos every now
Speaker 1: and then, uh so check me out and I usually
Speaker 1: mostly Twitter. I just if you want to find out
Speaker 1: what I'm doing, like second to second and find out
Speaker 1: what's irritating me today, Twitter is the way to go.
Speaker 1: There you go. And if you want to get in
Speaker 1: touch with us, you can send us an email the
Speaker 1: addresses tech stuff at how stuff works dot com, or
Speaker 1: you can drop us a line on Twitter or Facebook
Speaker 1: or Tumbler that's the third one, or handle it all
Speaker 1: three is tech Stuff H s W. And we will
Speaker 1: continue this obsolete discussion releases for more on this and
Speaker 1: thousands of other topics. Does it Works dot Com