For a short while, The Solid Signal Blog was honored to have Marty Silbernik on staff. Marty is a retired captain of industry who thought it would be fun to try his hand at blogging. I thought he was pretty good, too, especially this 2014 piece entitled, “Where do we go from here?” It opened up a whole line of thought about whether or not we’re actually giving something up when we give up our obsolete technologies. Sometimes, a technology like vinyl records comes back strong, but for the most part the landscape of tech history is littered with useless bits like Commodore VIC-20s, spring-loaded thermostats and AM-only radios.
When we say we miss old technology, we’re really saying we miss the mindset that old technology put us in. We miss the care we had to take winding a watch or the way we had to actually pay attention before DVRs made instant replay common. Those attitudes are still with us, you just have to think about it. Clean your monitor screen every day. Put down the remote and the phone and just watch TV. Listen to a recording all the way through. You don’t need old technology for that… just an old mindset.
I miss Marty’s columns, and I think it’s a shame he decided in short order that he was, in fact, too old to do this.
