Still behind the times

One of the things about me is that I always seem to be a bit behind the times. Not in the sense of being late to events. If anything, I'm early most of the time. (That noise you hear is Linda rolling her eyes really hard.) 

Much of my so-called career I was working with obsolete databases, mostly to pry data out of them for migration to a newer database. Sometimes writing custom reports to present information that the canned reports wouldn't show. Sometimes extending the life of a database so they didn't have to buy upgrades because something else was coming along, just not quite yet.

Those keeping up with the story know that I recently starting using old film cameras for some photos. One was made about the time I was in high school, the other shortly after I was born. Both work perfectly well, except for the light meter in the older one, but I knew that when I bought it, and it's an expected thing. Working perfectly well for film cameras, of course. I mostly don't check the back of the camera any more to see what I have. 

We don't have cable for TV. The wire comes into the house and dead ends. For a while it amused me to argue with the cable companies accusing me of somehow stealing their content. They didn't believe that anyone wouldn't have cable. Now, of course, with high speed internet (ours comes over the phone line, in an arrangement that the cute door to door sales people have difficulty understanding) one can stream content from any number of services, and are probably able to find any TV show or movie ever made.

We like to discover 'new' content at the library. They have a big bin of discs that contain TV shows and movies, and they let you borrow the discs for a week for free. Imagine that! We'll see something that mentions a show and we'll get the first season out to see if we like it. If we do, we might buy it. There's been any number of times we 'discover' a show after it's been cancelled, and we buy the entire run. We're currently in the middle of one of these, just finishing up the first season of Medium. 

I'd never heard of it till recently, but it popped up while looking at something else and I was a bit curious. Then I was at Fair's Fair, and saw a bunch of it on the shelf, and I had some credit there, so I thought, what the heck. We quite enjoyed it, but we were wondering a bit about the time frame, given the phone technologies they show in use. Then we realized that the show was actually 20 years old. Once again, behind the times. We'll probably go and get season 2. 

In a recent blog I alluded to the pace of life being much quicker than previous generations. This pace seems to be accelerating. Used to be that appliance lifetime was measured in generations. Human generations. In economic terms they were called durable goods. Now it's mayfly generations. Get 10 years out of a washer or dryer and you're doing well. 

There's two parts to this. Manufacturers have been building in obsolescence for a while now, to encourage us to not repair it or be buying something new, so as to increase their profits. Plus most people like buying new things. They don't want to be seen driving a car more than a few years old. They see a buddy with a new gadget, and they have to get one as well. But generally the new thing isn't even as good as the old thing, and has been bloated up with 'features' to increase the apparent value. Most software changes now are an example of bloat. And is a dedicated rice cooker really a necessary thing?

I can recall one new genuine improvement that amazed me at the time. I mean flat out jaw dropping amazed. It was a table saw with a safety device that could sense when it was starting to cut into a finger, and then it would stop the blade in 1/1000 of a second, and drop it below the table surface. It's hard to express how fast that is. Our fastest eyeblink is about 1/10 of a second. Someone pushing their finger into such a blade might not even need a band aid. And yet, the manufacturers of such saws refuse to implement the technology, saying it's too expensive. Which it isn't, even in monetary terms, and that's to say nothing of all the amputated fingers that happen without such a safety feature. But when the bean counters are looking at pennies per unit to cut costs or increase profits, such an addition is anathema to them. 

The same has been true of many other changes. Most of my readers will remember cars that essentially didn't have seat belts, and the fuss that was made when seatbelt legislation was enacted. Or airbags, the manufacturers screamed about that one. Or fuel injected engines. Crumple zones. Anti-lock brakes, and disc brakes. I think back to the cars of my childhood, and in particular the 66 Falcon that was my first car, and shudder to think of what a deathtrap that was. Given what an idiot teenager I was, it's a miracle I survived.

Some change is good. We have the life we lead now, because of change. But I'm thinking we should be  asking ourselves more often, does this change actually make things better? All too often, the answer is no, it's just change for the sake of change, to make it look new. This paradigm of ever increasing growth is eating our planet.

Just a random unblogged photo.

Of the Day

Driftwood Serendipity from 2017, then the driftwood.

Flower

Peony

Lily

Landscape

Green Fools

They crossed the abyss, and are trying to figure out how to deal with the next obstacle.

Tombstone

Caribou

Lynx

I'm pretty sure that Curtis thought of himself as a at least a lynx, at least some of the time. Not a true serendipity, in that this photo has been blogged, but when Curtis shows up with the same file number as the lynx, how could I not blog it?

Film

Another view of Tombstone valley. I never tire of this view.