Blog 7 – Obsolete objects

As I get older I have gradually started to notice some of the things that are disappearing or have already disappeared from our world. Not so much the big things, but the smaller everyday things. This is a thing in itself, this sudden appreciation of small things lost, as it is not something I would have spared a minute’s thought for in younger years. But now somehow, each of these often minor and trivial losses is another tiny arrow to my heart.

I understand why this is happening. It is because as time passes, slowly and inevitably, I too am becoming obsolete and disappearing along with the world I grew up in and grew so comfortable with. This is fine and I accept that it is the way of things. It must happen for the world to go on and keep progressing and challenging the young. It happened to my father and mother, and their parents before them, ad infinitum.

Yet it is still incredible to think I grew up in a world without personal computers, ipads, mobile phones, ATMs, the Internet, and immediate 24/7 access to everything and everyone. Sure when I was a child, some of us thought we would be living on the moon and Mars by now, or travelling through time, and driving around in flying cars, having eliminated personal greed, solved world poverty and learned to live and let live – but you can’t have everything.

To paraphrase someone who’s name escapes me, but I read it on the Internet, possibly in The Guardian online, if you had told us that in the early 21^st century we would have instant access to every single piece of knowledge ever known to humanity in a device held in the palm of our hands, we probably would have turned you upside down, dacked you, and flushed your head down the dunny for being a hopeless fantasist. The fact we use this knowledge to access all manner of pornography and post inane and abusive messages and images to complete strangers is somewhat disappointing, but evolution is a slow process punctuated with wrong turns.

Just out of interest, here is a list of objects which I have noticed are on the verge of disappearing from our world as we speak. Look around and remember these items when you see them, for pretty soon they will be little more than part of our collective social memory:

Public telephone boxes – who uses these things? Only the poor and desperate my friend.

Home land line telephones – no longer required once you’ve got broadband wifi, or something like that. A young person told me, not over the phone.

Wrist watches – next time you’re in the city, check the wrists on anyone under forty. See a watch?

Video/DVD stores – are they even called video stores anymore? These things are gone with the dinosaurs, dying off by the day. My local outlet is a case in point. It shut down at its cool location in the middle of the suburb next to the start-up gym (how popular are gyms???) and re-located to this really sketchy dark warehouse out on the edge of town alongside the railway line. I went there once, and some guy tried to sell me meth in the car park. There’s an M&M machine just inside the door by the counter which the attendants have just abandoned and left to rot. The M&Ms are all melting into one another and leaving a trail of slime against the glass. The machine is a symbol of what the store itself is becoming. The staff can sense it too, with their resigned faces, doomed eyes and slumping postures. I haven’t been back again.

CD players in cars – no longer required.

News print – too slow. Yesterday’s news by the time it gets to the page.

Books – pffffftttt. Kids read Twitter. Attention span, hello? If you can’t tell me what you need to say in less than 140 characters then you ain’t got nuthin’ worth sayin’.

Tea ladies – just kidding, but I swear we still had them when I started my first job.

Personal service at servos – Had to admit I was really shocked when I pulled up to a country servo last month and someone came out and pumped the fuel for me. I blinked, pinched myself, asked them what the hell they were doing invading my personal space, then checked my mobile phone to ascertain what year it was. Thought for a minute I might have stepped across a break in the space time continuum, or walked into a Stephen King short story or an episode of the Twilight Zone. You know the one, where the guy wakes up and he’s the same but everyone else is different… which episode? THEY WERE ALL LIKE THAT! (Sorry, channelling Jerry Seinfeld there)… Who? Just some 1990s comedian you’ve never heard of.

Personal service anywhere – like at the supermarket. Who needs personal service?

A sense of modesty – I put this down as a corollary of the 24/7 access society we have created. There are people maturing now who have never known a different world. When you are used to immediate gratification and have the capacity to gain immediate access to everything at your fingertips, it’s probably natural that some might consider qualities like patience and hard work obsolete. I call this the Kardashian Syndrome. To the previous generation it was the Paris Hilton Syndrome…Who? Just some old lady everyone’s forgotten, but she taught us the important principle that it’s perfectly acceptable to act like a whore and still demand to be treated like a princess.

Which is funny in itself because I know full well my generation had it easy – no wars, plenty of jobs, decent medicine and health care, green fields, sunshine and exercise – a world that for the most part got better and more comfortable by the year.

But those poor bastards who came before me, now they really had it tough.

BTW my list of obsolete things is itself probably obsolete, because I am way waaaay out of touch.