Observer-Reporter forum

ellipses · Mod Joined: 29 Sep 2008 Posts: 9218 Location: WashPa!

I was just thinking about the pace at which technology evolves and interweaves itself with our lives... and how something novel and new might only work while the technology is novel and new... and would quickly become either annoying or inefficient once broad adoption takes place.

The thing I had in mind was that old AOL new mail alert "You've got mail."

It would be quaint and novel and neat when you might "dial up" once or twice a day to get your email... but now, I am online 24/7, have 6 email accounts, get push email on my phone, and get 300 wiener pill spams a day... I would put a bullet in my brain if I had to hear that annoying voice ever 15 seconds EVERY DAY OF MY LIFE.

What other things were useful or cool or whatever at one point... but are completely unreasonable or annoying now?
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Cylinsier · Master Joined: 29 Sep 2008 Posts: 13229 Location: Oh shi-

Dial-up in general. Palm Pilots or any kind of PDA that is NOT also a phone. Beepers and pagers. Pretty soon, standalone GPS devices will be because of their phone integration. Google Wave might put the final nail in the coffin of messengers like AIM. Gmail might have been the beginning of the end of email clients. We may only be a decade or so away from disk media; everything is moving in the direction of being downloaded. Landline phones are a zombie technology; I very much doubt that will still exist once the baby boomer generation is gone. Cable and satellite TV could be gone in 20 or 30 years if internet TV picks up. If I think of more, I'll add them.
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