Where is your technology museum?

From the New Yorker.


I have a technology museum.

No really, I do. I noticed it the other day.

I guess it starts in the basement. There is, as the cartoon above describes, a box of AC adapters and power cables that have long since been orphaned. What did they once belong to? Who knows, because whatever it was broke a long time ago and being in a disposable society, I threw the tech out.

Next to that box is another, this one filled with VHS tapes. Their contents have been replaced by DVD counterparts years ago. Why do I still have all the tapes? This question is made doubly confounding by a trip upstairs.

I have a VCR. It stopped working at least two years ago. In fact, there's still a tape stuck in it (a Godzilla movie, if I recall). Why haven't I just thrown the thing out? Better yet, why haven't I taken it to one of the area's many technology recycling centers? I'm not sure. Just haven't gotten around to it.

And that's how simple it is. As technology turns obsolete, it accumulates in darkened corners as autumn leaves in the porch corner.

Really dusty autumn leaves.

I'm guessing many of us have similar versions of these museums that we curate. They come to be faster than we realize.

Ray Kurzweil, arguing The Singularity is Near, warned me...and all of us...about this phenomenon. Many of my museum antiquities were rendered irrelevant only ten years ago. That's not all that long in the grand scheme of things. In fact, even my DVDs are obsolete and cumbersome due to my easy access to streaming services such as Netflix and Amazon Prime (except for a few rare gems I own, likely only appreciated by me.) The Law of Accelerated Returns. How long until I get cybernetics?

Hopefully soon. I'm feeling my age. Looking at technological relics isn't helping.


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