Sometimes the biggest changes in technology aren’t necessarily the new things, but the old things that are no longer needed.
- Spinning hard disc drives. Any moveable part is a point of failure. Since Solid state drives and flash memory has come down in price and expanded capacity, and cloud storage is available, I no longer can recommend buying a new (or used) spinning magnetic hard drive.
- Fax machines. Secure web along with other methods have replaced fax machines.
- Outside copper telephone and cable lines. Any outside communication line should be fiber optic, to prevent spread of lightning strikes. Fiber optics allow for distance and for speed.
- Phone books, paper newspapers. With the web, and most numbers now unlisted phone books have become mostly useless. Newspapers (the actual paper version) have become obsolete. The content is old by the time it is published, and due to lost revenue and cuts the content itself has become more unreliable.
- VHS, CDS, DVDs, blue laser DVDs, floppy drives, thumb (portable flash) drives. All of these sneaker net devices are rarely needed because of networking and cloud services.
- Florescent lighting, incandescent lighting. Replaced by LED and natural lighting.
- Big Paper (and CD media) manuals. Since most people don’t take the time to read big multipage paper manuals they have been replaced by: Online and web based manuals, manuals and tutorials within the product itself (such as in a computer or phone, or on a cars display/navigation system). Also instructions are sometimes put on the products packaging itself.
I made an ebook. It’s called Datacommuting. on iBooks, Amazon (Kindle) and Nook
Related: last years list
Fiberoptics