They Still Make You?

They Still Make You? The Business Insider Hopes Not

As the decade winds down, I have stumbled across several lists of technologies and customs that became either obsolete or far less prevalent over the past 10 years.

They Still Make You? covered New York Magazine's list a couple of weeks ago. 

We also covered the Law Librarian Blog's list of obsolete learning technologies.

The Business Insider has compiled it's slide-show of technologies it found had become obsolete in the past decade:

1. PDAs
2. E-mail accounts you have to pay for
3. Dial-up
4. Getting film developed
5. Movie Rental Stores
6. Maps
7. Newspaper classifieds
8. The Landline
9. Long-Distance Charges
10. Public pay phones
11. VCRs
12. Fax machines
13. Phone books, dictionaries, encyclopedias
14. Calling "411"
15. CDs
16. Backing up your data on floppies or CDs
17. Getting bills in the mail
18. Buttons
19. Losing touch
20. Boundaries
21. Paper
22. Bonus: Record Stores

One caveat is that many of these are still ubiquitous---no one knows quite why--- but still a good indicator of what we will be seeing less of in the years to come.

The article is worth the read for the commentary and pictures.

They Still Make You? Learning Technologies We Should Look Out For

As the decade winds down, I have stumbled across several lists of technologies and customs that became either obsolete or far less prevalent over the past 10 years.

They Still Make You? covered New York Magazine's list a couple of weeks ago.

Here is the list put together by the Law Librarian Blog of learning technologies that became obsolete during the aughts:

1. Scantron Sheets

2. Overhead Projectors and Transparencies

3. Classroom VCR/DVD Players

4. Course Packs and Course Readers

5. Photocopiers

6. Microfiche

7. Language and Computer Labs

8. Paper Journals and Periodicals?

Um, maybe not obsolete...or even rare enough to make They Still Make You?  But still, nice to see what our material might be down the road.

Beepers

For a moment in the early nineties, the electronic pager was the it-electronic communication device.  Call it the iPhone of 1991.

Doctors had them.  Drug dealers too.  And that one pathetic suburban homeboy in your middle school? Yep, he had a pager too.  You knew the only person paging him was him mom, and not his homeboys back at the Robert Taylor Homes. 

Pagers, or "Beepa's" as we called them, were memorialized in songs such as N.W.A.'s canonical "Fuck the Police":

Fuckin with me cuz I'm a teenager
With a little bit of gold and a pager

And when we played the dozens (i.e. yo' mama jokes), we knew we could crush our opponent with the following:

Your mama's so fat, when her beeper goes off, people think she's backing up.

Good times.

With the advent of sophisticated cellular technology, the pager was abandoned by most people in favor of cell phones, and now smart-phone (e.g. blackberries and iPhones).

And by most, I mean pretty much everyone but the Ontario (California) Police Department.  In the matter of City of Ontario v. Quon (see Ninth Circuit opinion, cert petition, Adam Liptak's coverage in the New York Times, Emily Bazelon's coverage in Slate) Jeff Quon, a sergeant with the police department, was issued what the court described as "an alphanumeric pager" for job-related communication. 

The police department capped pages at 25,000 characters per month, and required employees to pay out of their own pockets for pages transmitted subsequent to reaching that cap (also known as overage). 

Quon paid overage and used his work-issued pager to send sexually explicit messages to his girlfriend.  Quon sent so many sexually explicit messages and exceeded the allotted character limit to such an extreme degree, that his boss conducted an audit.  Please note that Quon paid for these messages using his own after tax dollars.  Anyway, the sexually explicit messages were discovered. 

Quon sued the P.D., arguing that his boss' review of his text messages constituted unreasonable search and seizure under the Fourth Amendment.  The case presents many gray areas.  On the one hand the pager was owned and issued by Quon's government employer.  On the other hand, the messages searched were funded by Quon.  The Supreme Court recently agreed to hear the case in order to determine whether a government employee has a right to privacy in his pager.

Pagers:  They Still Make You?

They Still Make You? New York Magazine Doesn't Think So

New York Magazine compiled a slide show of 17 things that were ubiquitous at the beginning of this decade (the aughts), and now are either gone, or so rare...well, let's just say that when they do appear, you have to ask "They Still Make You?

Here is New York Magazine's list (helpfully transcribed by the Consumerist):

1. Answering machines
2. Lickable stamps
3. Foldable road maps
4. Cathode ray tube TVs
5. Incandescent light bulbs
6. Paying for pornography
7. Smoking in bars
8. Fax machines
9. Hydrox cookies
10. Cassette tapes
11. The French franc
12. Floppy disks
13. Phone books
14. Polaroid photos
15. Bank deposit slips
16. Subway tokens
17. The Rolodex

My challenge to readers, now, is to be on the look out for these items in your day-to-day life.  Find them, photograph them and send them to theystillmakeyou@gmail.com with a quick narrative of where and how you encountered the item.  As always, we'll post your findings and start a healthy discussion about life in the post-cassette tape era.

Mailing Newspaper Clippings

Before the advent of email (and gen-X/Y-ers' remarkable ability to cut-and-paste urls right into the bodies of emails) if you wanted to share a newspaper or magazine article with a loved one, you had to take scissors and cut out the article and mail it to that person.

The other day, I received an envelope from my grandmother containing a couple of newspaper clippings she thought I might be interested in:

I suspect that this is probably one of the last times I will receive actual clippings in an envelope sent via the U.S. Postal Service.

Mailing Newspaper Clippings:  They Still Make You?

Mercury Thermometers

Once upon a time you could find out your body temperature by sticking one of these in an orifice:

(photo by Beth L.)

The mercury thermometer has been phased out over the past generation.  Something about it being made out of glass and containing mercury-- health hazard and all that.

Anyway, reader Vance L. sent in the following story:

A friend related this story to me.  She needed a new thermometer.  She want to a major drug store (beginning with a W) and looked for one.  All she could find were electronic thermometers.  The one she broke was a mercury one.  So she asked a clerk who was about 19 or 20.  He told her there is no such thing.  That mercury is dangerous and she must be mistaken, nobody would put mercury in their mouth.  She was so taken aback by he attitude and ignorance she asked for the manager.  When she told the manager what happened he laughed and took her to a shelf where the thermometers were and reach to the back for a mercury thermometer. 

Mercury thermometers: They Still Make You?

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Follow Up Friday

We here at They Still Make You like to revisit past blog posts, and find out what has happened to our found arcana since first writing about it.

• PRI's The Takeaway reported this week that vinyl albums are making a come back, and may be this holiday season's hottest gift.

• A friend told us of her experience encountering a cash only deli.  

The deli had not posted a sign indicating that it was cash only, which is specifically why our friend chose to get a salad at that establishment.  She had canceled her ATM card due to fraudulent activity and was waiting for her bank to issue a new one.  To fill the gap, she was relying on her credit card only.  So, she went into the deli, ordered a big salad, waited as the clerk made it, and then when it was time to pay she flashed the plastic -- you know where this is going-- only to hear:

"Sorry, cash only"

And because our friend could not get cash due to not having an ATM card, she had to walk away from the salad.  The joke's on the deli.  They are the ones who relied on a 'nearly bygone' business practice, failed to post signs informing customers of that fact, and then wasted supplies on a salad they could not sell to our friend because they refused to accept her [necessary] method of payment.

• And finally, a follow up from Katie W., our Tab drinker: "Me and my mom and my aunt are keeping Tab alive!! :)"

Let us know what you think about these things they still make, or anything else.

Cormac McCarthy's Typewriter

The New York Times reports that Cormac McCarthy's typewriter is up for auction at Christie's:

Mr. McCarthy agreed to auction off his Olivetti Lettera 32 and donate the proceeds to the Santa Fe Institute, a nonprofit interdisciplinary scientific research organization with which both men are affiliated.

McCarthy used the Olivtetti to write "No Country for Old Men", "All the Pretty Horses" and "The Road."  As the author explained to the Times,

"I have typed on this typewriter every book I have written including three not published. Including all drafts and correspondence I would put this at about five million words over a period of 50 years.”

According to the Times' report, the auctioning off of this particular typewriter does not signal the end of McCarthy's use of typewriters in general.  McCarthy's friend John Miller tracked down another Olivetti Lattera 32:

“He found another one just like this,” a portable Olivetti that looks practically brand new, Mr. McCarthy said from his home in New Mexico. “I think he paid $11, and the shipping was about $19.95.”

Typewriter users: They Still Make You?

AMC Eagle

Seen on the way to the airport, Saturday:

An AMC Eagle.  A car that, according to wikipedia, hasn't been on the market in 22-years.  

According to my father, who like all men, can tell you the make and model of the car speeding past you in the next lane, this particular Eagle is probably about my age.  For a 30-year-old car, this particular vehicle appears to be well maintained.

AMC Eagle drivers: They Still Make You?