Technological Obsolescence

Well Its 2010

And its another decade with little technological advancement, but I think we are still using a chunk of technology that I thought would be obsolete by now. Here is my list.

Household Vacuum cleaners



Yes that is Dyson DC25 that retails at roughly $500, and Yes you still have to push it around.
I honestly thought by now we would all have Roombas or some type of *affordable auto-piloted robot that could recognize when something needed to be cleaned up or would clean up on command.
Granted there are still shop-vacs that are needed for the real tough jobs, FYI some have up to 6.5 horsepower.

Fax Machines



They are a dying, yet still necessary trend in businesses. Now, they are more seen as an addendum to printer/scanners for convenience. I'm surprised they are still trucking though, after no real change since their popularity almost 25 years ago.

Microwave Oven




Now don't get me wrong, I love the microwave. One of the lazy man's best friends. But it hasn't really changed. The invention was originally discovered on accident 45 years ago, when a man at Raytheon found out that Microwaves had melted a candy bar in his pocket. Maybe its just because of the science fiction movies, but I was hoping we would be closer to here by now

Pneumatic drills



Or the "Jackhammer". It uses compressed air, a pile driver, and a drill bit to basically break up or break down large peaces of rock or concrete. Although there are special components to help silence them, they give off 100 decibels at 2 meters away.
We live in an age of lasers, pulsated discharges, thermal shock. You would think the jackhammer would have met its match by now? But nope, they are still plowing the streets.

The Car Lighter




Other than the fact that you could charge your cell phone in the same slot that your car lighter goes, I would say the lighter itself, is due for an upgrade. Its been doing the same thing for 85 yrs with no change. "as more people quit smoking, the number of lighter sockets in cars is increasing." Now I'm sure we have all found use of the lighter even if we don't smoke. But really? There hasn't been a new car lighter?

Other technology upgrades that are slowly changing in different parts of the world and soon to be obsolete all together are; Lawn Mowers different Locomotives, I'm sure there is more, but really? I know the old saying, "If its not broke, don't fix it", Well if it can be improved, why not improve it?

reply to post by juveous


When a basic design can be improved enough to render it functional and cost-effective, that is what will be used. It makes no financial sense for a company to sink a bunch of money into creating a new way of making a car cigarette lighter, that is backwards-compatible with existing ones, if the current ones work just fine. The same goes for everything else in that list.

reply to post by davesidious


I agree. But since the dawn of these inventions if you were to ask them if it would hold the same unchanged in 2010? I would be surprised if anyone would have said yes. Even though our future predicting capabilities, technologically speaking, have been blurred by our own imagination. Most inventions have changed, or at least serve their pinnacle purpose. The point is, I feel that the things I mentioned aren't up to par with past expectations, given the relative changes that have been happening over the years.

Take steam-engines as an example, you'd think they were obsolete but are very much in use in the most modern nuclear power stations...a sub-critical nuclear reaction heats water to produce steam to spin a steam-turbine and produc electricity

A technology unchanged since the advent of the electrical-age

reply to post by juveous


True, very true. It happens a lot, though. The human race seems so arrogant in its assumption that it will make massive leaps in technical ability and innovation, when history has shown that it is not the case. We do make leaps, but rarely, and definitely not as regularly as most think.

The Y2K bug existed because of the short-sighted nature of many software developers, who couldn't imagine their systems being in place for more than a decade or two.

These things happen