Upgrade to Oblivion

By Gordon Hopkins Recently, you may have felt a great disturbance in the force, as if millions of voices wearing flannel shirts and Doc Martens suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced. Of course, I am talking about the announcement this week that Apple has decided to pull the plug on the beloved iPod after 22 years of delivering the music of Nirvana and Wu-Tang Clan to Generation Xers everywhere. It is always sad when a machine that once symbolized an entire generation is finally laid to rest on the scrapheap of history. The Victrola. The 8-track. The Walkman. That is the nature of technology. It is the way of the world. Technology advances and leaves behind the old, the unwanted, the obsolete. As progress, um, progresses, machines that once seemed cutting edge now seem quaint and no longer have value, except to old-timers unwilling to get with the times, and pretentious hipsters who expect us to be impressed with their vinyl collection. If the mad rush to replace the old with the new seems to be accelerating, it is not your imagination. It really is happening faster than ever before. The problem is not simply obsolescence. I'm sure you already know that. It can't all be blamed on the marketing machines urging us to always buy the latest and the greatest of whatever is latest and greatest this week, either. The problem is upgrades. Products these days are designed to need upgrades, even if they don't actually need any upgrades. It may be that whatever electronic gadget you have in your possession works just find. Still, at some point, you are going to be forced to upgrade. How many times have we clicked “no” on a computer or phone when an upgrades wants to install itself? We all know that, no matter how many times w click that “no” button, eventually, that upgrade will force itself on us, whether we like it or not. I am all for upgrades, but only when they are needed. My philosophy is simple. I want the level of technology that works for me... AND NO MORE! To put it another way, there is a reason you don't install a jet engine on a school bus. To illustrate my point, I am writing this column on a 1929 Remington Model #3 portable tgypewriter. This machine is 93 years old and yet it works exactly as it did when it was first manufactured and exactly as it was intended. It could probably use a new ribbon but my point is, it gets the job done and, sometimes, that is really all we need.

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