People sometimes ask why I have an old speedometer above my desk. I tell them I found it at a yard sale for $1, and I fell in love with the fact that its gear-filled analog goodness stands as a stark reminder of how a shiny new technology of yesterday is really just today’s antique.
Recently one of my friends challenged me on this. His argument was that the iPod was so incredibly advanced that it was hard to imagine it could become an obsolete relic. I responded by reminding him that my first iPod had an LCD screen and could barely do more than play music…and that it was only 7 years old.
Dumbstruck, he said, “Wow, I’ll have to think about that.”
Tags: obsolescence
Is that a picture of your lover underneath the speedometer?
What about when New Coke when back to Coca-Cola Classic? Modern food science technology thwarted!
Also, the push-button transmission never really caught on…
I heard recently that NYC buses will soon go back to the “pull the cord” method of alerting the driver when to stop, replacing the current “push the tape strip” method.
How rare is it that we ever choose to step backward technologically? I can’t recall another instance of this phenomenon.
Actually, Julie, I can think of another, and as a bonus, it relates directly to speedometers (as pictured above)!
In the 80s, everything was digital. As soon as they could make an LED display, it seemed like everything had to have an LED display.
Of course, a logical candidate for the LED display was the automobile dashboard, and specifically the speedo and tachometer. But it was a total flop: most people couldn’t stand the new digital readouts.
And it wasn’t because people were having some fond attachment to an analog display. In fact, the digital dashboard was deemed less effective at quickly communicating driving and engine speed. The assumption is that a digital display, while technically accurate, requires the drive to look, read, and process the information.
However, an analog display is an immediate read: you can see at a glance where the needle is and, once you’re used to the display, you know without reading any numbers what your engine or driving speed.
Further, analog displays give you a ratio reading at a glance, as well. In other words, if your car red lines at 10K rpm, you can see that when the needle is halfway to 10K you must be at 5K rpm. With a digital display, the driver first reads 5,000 RPM, then has to process the data to gauge how that relates to the car’s overall allowable engine speed.
So, now that I think about it, this reply almost negates my post…since we’ve all gone back to analog speedometers!