A museum of discarded electronics. I’ve been thinking that might be a good use for all the tech we’ve had to buy over the years that quickly becomes outmoded. (Useless, that is.) As I look over these devices I can recall just why they were purchased. Mostly it was to solve a more immediate problem. You perhaps overspend so that you can avoid disrupting the tech services you’ve learned you can’t live without. Then new tech comes along and you need new hardware to do the same thing you’ve always done. Soon you’ve got a museum’s worth of old tech. I tried to get my mother on the internet by sending her an old computer that I bought with grant money back in my Nashotah House days. When it was all set up, it was discovered that it was too old to connect to the modern internet. I’ve lost track of how many computers are in the attic, but at least now there’s one less. The thing these all have in common is that they require electricity.
Image credit: Mircea Madau, public domain via Wikimedia Commons
A few weeks ago I wrote about our eclectic electric issues. While our utilities company and electrician try to sort out who does what (it turns out that our house was never properly wired up from the mains), we’ve got a dilemma. Since we all work from home and we all use computers, how are we going to work on a day when the electricity has to be off? (Let’s hope it’s after this cold snap is over.) We depend on electricity in this electronic world. The solution may be to buy some new tech. A battery-powered hot spot and fully charged laptops might be able to get us through an hour or two with no electricity. We’ve become so dependent on the juice that the thought of being without it is scary.
The solution, of course, will quickly become outmoded as 6G and 7G, on to infinity, await in the wings. They will all need electricity. A house that was never properly hardwired can be a tricky thing. Electricians and linemen have to have weekends too. In a world where constant connectivity has eliminated snow days, such force majeure on a personal level holds no, well, force. Aligning three employers who say it’s okay to step “out of the office” for a few hours at a time not of your own choosing will be impossible. So we buy a new tech solution and hope it’s fully charged. And when we’re fully wired up again the new device can eventually go in the museum of obscure electronics.
