Speeding Obsolescence Means Many Items Are Not Lasting Your Lifetime
Has anybody else noticed that today’s big educational problem is not that Johnny hasn’t learned to read, but that he can’t tie shoelaces? Oh, eventually he will, but not until he’s 8 or 9, when he first gets shoelaces. Until that age, children’s shoes all fasten with Velcro.
I don’t know why I say shoes. Children don’t have shoes now. They have sneakers, and not the canvas kind we had. These may be leather and cost about as much as new feet.
I myself have taught half a dozen children to tie shoelaces, not because I remembered learning any better than their parents, but because I found a tutor--a helpful shoe salesman close enough in age to her first experience with shoelaces to remember it. It was completely different. You don’t do each loop separately now; you make two loops, one in each hand, then tie them together.
When something as elemental as the way shoelaces are tied changes in your own lifetime, you’re up against a really galloping form of obsolescence. Instead of just sitting around and talking nostalgically of things in common usage during our parents’ lifetime, we can now tally all that has disappeared during our own.
Some products have been outmoded by technology, which produced a better model and, these days, does so faster than ever. Some went out of fashion. Some just disappeared, in some cases replaced by an unexpected alternative, part outgrowth, part chance.
Most people think first of the things that technology replaced with a better (faster, more accurate, easier) means of getting to the same end. Gone, for example, are rotary dials on telephones. Push buttons get callers to the numbers they want faster and more accurately and, nowadays, can take them a lot of other places besides. Records and record players are virtually gone. Compact disc players deliver the same music, but a better sound and by a totally different mechanical means.
Cloth diapers were gone, but they’re coming back. It turned out that disposable diapers, for all their other virtues, aren’t as disposable as believed.
Slide rules are definitely gone, replaced by electronic calculators. But gone with them, and less easily replaced, says a scientific friend, is something even more vital--the need, and the continued ability, to estimate.
Not yet gone, but going, are passenger trains, unable to compete with planes on speed or price or even service now. Again, something is going with them--leisurely travel? comfort? a close-up view of whatever lies between here and there?--and enough people feel the loss to keep a few clumsy versions of them in business, if barely.
Going also, if gradually, are typewriters--manual, electric and even the electronic versions desperately posing as word processors. With them, of course, goes carbon paper, and good riddance.
With clotheslines will go clothespins; the wooden kind have already vanished. Only poor people, unable to afford dryers, still have clotheslines, as do the rich, who still have seasonal articles “aired” and linens hung out for a “fresh” smell. Washtubs disappeared in our parents’ lifetime, and laundry tubs are disappearing from ours. Only a dozen of us believe this a great loss, but why apologize: I’ve got mine, I’m easy.
Just as many, if not more, products fell to fashion, not technology. People simply wanted a different look, or were given one, perhaps because of some practical advantage in cost or function.
Clothing styles are always changing, but rarely does a whole item vanish. Girdles seem quite gone, and except for a nostalgic little resurgence, so are stockings, firmly replaced by panty hose. Peds are not just gone, but almost unknown. This is a test: What were Peds? (Answer: Women’s hosiery that cover just the foot.)
Fitted bedspreads are gone, probably because of the labor of fitting and piping those corners. Telephone booths are almost gone, reduced to shallow body shields that save on both space and material.
Window shades have also disappeared, for no discernible reason, considering their ineffective replacements. Eggbeaters are hard to find, also retired unjustly. It’s odd how many kitchen instruments have been replaced by a motorized version no more effective, much bulkier and harder to wash.
Explanations, even with hindsight, are often just guesswork. Many products just evolved: A change or addition turned out to be practical for the manufacturer and appealing to consumers. Velcro fastenings aren’t better, but they made it possible for small children to put on their own shoes.
The hands have probably been disappearing from watches because it’s easier to make and drop in the digital display units; there’s no advantage to the consumer. Dials on radios, disappearing as we speak, seem an even easier way to find a station than the new digital displays.
Why, really, did fountain pens yield to ballpoints, which are messy even when they don’t leak and the user isn’t careless? Why were thumbtacks replaced by pushpins? Why did the 50-cent piece go out of use, or the $2 bill?
Who knows? And what’s next? It’s anyone’s guess, and welcome. . . .
