Wednesday, November 15, 2006

"How quaint!"

"How Quaint"

A phone rang. A phone rang in a far corner of the office that we had entirely forgotten about.

"What's that?" asked Steve.

"I haven't a clue," I replied, and a brief search of the area turned up the answer.

The fax machine.

"A fax machine? Since when have we had a fax machine?"

And: "How quaint!"

And: "Look! There's some paper coming out! Haven't these people heard of email?"

It was a triumph of ancient technology over the spanking new digital age, and we were so impressed we threw the fax into the recycling bin.

The world, it seems, is filled with old technology that simply refuses to die peacefully. The latest Argos catalogue, that dictionary of household taste, still has a page of Sony Walkmans (they never came up with a decent plural in all those years) that take cassettes. Even CD Walkmen are a tad passé, and I should know, I've got three.

So, I've wasted literally minutes of my life coming up with a list of "How Quaint" technology that won't go away:

* Faxes
* Audio cassettes

* VHS video
* Dial-up internet

* Four star petrol
* "I'm calling from a pay phone"

* "I've got to renew my CB radio licence"
* "And over on Radio 4 Long Wave, Test Match Special"

And yes, we still have a PC in our operation that runs Windows 3.11 on a 66MHz processor. Cutting edge!

What have you got?

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