Top Eight Technlogies That Will Soon Be Obsolete
- Digital Watches
- Flashlights
- Wires
- Television Programming
- Flash Drives
- Home Phones
- Alarm Clocks
- Newspapers
Technology brings about new changes everyday, which is really great assuming that you're not one of the technologies on this list. These are all things that were, and in some cases still are, ubiquitous, but will soon be found only in history books. Correction: history e-books.
There are two types of watches. There are the analogue watches which you wear because, let's be honest, you look great in them. Then there are the digital watches which, while you might not look as great in, can give you the exact time. Dumb phones, smart phones, and possibly even smart watches in the near future, will take this time-keeping role. Analogue watches are a style, not a technology, so those will not become obsolete, at least not in the immediate future, but digital watches, with the exception of those with GPS capabilities, are all but gone.
Ok, this one might be a bit of a stretch. Flashlights won't become obsolete completely, possibly ever, but they are being slowly replaced by smart phones, much like digital watches. Many modern phones have cameras with flash and it didn't take long for developers to start messing with the flash and turning it from a quick, instant, flash to a light that stays on. And just like that, everybody has a flashlight in their pocket.
This last decade has been the decade of the wireless. Everything from keyboards to game controllers has become wireless. The only wires still commonplace are those connecting devices to power sources and those connecting devices to their display. Many believe that the former of the two will become much less common soon as wireless charging is being experimented with in several places around the world. It's also very easy to imagine data to be sent from devices to displays via the internet rather than cables. Oh, wait did I forget to mention the wires used to bring quality television programming to your television?
Of all the things on the list, this will most likely take the longest to phase out because of all of the huge corporations that rely on it, its existing infrastructure, and the tradition that comes with it. I mean, everybody needs to have TV programming, right? Isn't that just the way it works? At the turn of the millenium, the idea of television programming becoming obsolete would be laughable, but with the dawn of websites like Netflix, Youtube, Hulu, and even the network's sites themselves, you can watch all of your favorite shows without ever having to turn on the television. It really is outdated technology. It forces you to have to be at a specific place at a specific time. If you want to watch the next episode of Big Bang Theory, you better be at home sitting on your spot on the couch, exactly when it airs. DVR's have done much to improve this, but in improving this, DVR's have made television advertising next to useless. With the decline of television programming, every time is prime time.
Flash drives, those things that everybody calls "USB"'s for some reason, are a relatively new technology. They are practical, small, fast, and can store increasingly massive amounts of data. Flash drives really are incredible, but they showed up at a bad time. There is a new type of storage available. It's free, it stores more than a flash drive, can be transported more easily, and involves a severely lower risk of being lost. This storage device is the internet. Cloud storage is becoming a more and more viable alternative to traditional flash storage through websites like Dropbox and Google Drive, that soon walking into an office with a file on flash drive will be no better than walking into an office today with the latest revenue reports on a floppy disk.
You have a cell phone in your pocket now. You are paying for it monthly. It can do everything your home phone can do plus more. It's always with you. Why do you have a home phone? Seriously, why?
Smartphones aren't done making technologies obsolete just yet. Dedicated alarm clocks have been a staple of homes everywhere for decades, but smart phones are changing that. Many phones that didn't do well enough on their exams to be classified as smart even have alarm clocks built in. Many apps also exist that track the user's sleep phase based on movement and wakes the user up when they are at their lightest sleep. Using an alarm clock to wake up when there is already a smart phone next to your bed makes about as much sense as going outside to pick up the newspaper.
There is no secret here. Newspapers are slowly losing subscribers who are opting to get the news on their tablets, phones, and computers. And there is no reason not to. It's free, is more convenient, is more portable, and to top it all off, it saves trees so you can rest easily knowing that you are helping to save the planet while reading on your tablet about how we will all be covered in water or engulfed in lava by 2014 or something.
List by: Nicholas Munarriz
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