The gadgets of Memory Lane

 Bear with me while I stroll down Memory Lane and list some of the gadgets, devices and services from the past 30–40 years that have largely become outdated or replaced by newer technology:

The Video Cassette Recorder was replaced by DVDs, Blu-ray, and streaming.

 Cassette tapes & Walkman players were replaced by MP3 players, smartphones, and streaming.

CD players & Discman were replaced by digital downloads and streaming apps.

Pocket calculators were replaced by smartphones and calculator apps (though scientific calculators still hang on in education).

Rotary dial landline phones have been replaced first by push-button, cordless, and then by mobile/smartphones.

Public phone boxes were replaced by mobile phones.

Film cameras & Polaroids are largely gone, replaced by digital cameras and smartphone cameras.

 Fax machines (remember them?) have been replaced by email and cloud document sharing.

Pagers and beepers have been replaced by SMS, instant messaging, and mobile notifications.

Floppy disks were replaced first by USB sticks, CDs, and external drives, and then by cloud storage.

 MiniDisc players were replaced by MP3 players and streaming services.

 Portable DVD players were replaced by tablets and streaming.

Standalone GPS devices (SatNavs) have largely been replaced by smartphone GPS apps.

Typewriters (on which I wrote my PhD thesis) went out when personal computers and laptops came in. 

Overhead projectors (acetate sheets) were replaced by digital projectors and smartboards.

Dedicated alarm clocks & bedside radios have largely given way to smartphone alarms and apps.

 Answering machines have been replaced by voicemail and visual voicemail.

 Palm-Pilots and early PDAs were replaced by smartphones.

Handheld gaming devices (Game Boy, PSP, etc.) have been partially replaced by mobile gaming (though still niche with Switch). 

Home stereo systems with large hi-fi stacks were replaced by compact Bluetooth speakers and smart speakers.

 Many of these weren’t just replaced by one device but by the smartphone, which combined calculator, music player, camera, maps, phone, and computer into one gadget.

 I take that Memory Lane stroll to see Schumpeter in action with his creative destruction. We don’t live in the world of Parmenides where things are constant; we live instead in the Heraclitus world of constant change. The new things do more, do it better, and for the most part do it more cheaply. They make us richer, both financially and in terms of what we can achieve.

I think to myself what a wonderful world.

Madsen Pirie