Image by James Provost via Flickr

Many years ago I heard someone, don’t know who,  talk about planned obsolescence.  He said that technology would make change happen so quickly that what was new one day would be old the next.  And that manufacturers would not produce things meant  to last a long time but things that would  last no more than 2-5 years.

There are 2 reasons this long ago interview came to mind; my television and my cell phone.

With the change in options that Netflix announced I am trying to decide if I should just have DVD’s or just streaming movies.  Right now I get DVD’s and I watch the streaming movies on my computer. If I have just the streaming I would want a screen bigger than my ‘puter but it seems my TV is too old and I will have to buy a Blu-ray player to make the streaming work.

What a bummer.  I have a DVD player that works just fine but is old (everything in my condo is old, the TV, the DVD player, me, the cat…) so it won’t do the streaming thing.  The TV and DVD are all of 6 years old but basically obsolete.

Then there is my cell phone, my only phone.  Sometimes it doesn’t ring.  Sometimes the voice mail notification beep doesn’t sound and the icon doesn’t show. So not only do I not know someone has called I don’t know they have left a message. (As far as I know the texting is still ok.) When I called to ask why this was happening and how to fix it I was told that my phone is old and probably won’t always work and should be replaced.  My phone is maybe 3 years old…and obsolete.

I think my parents had 2 TV’s in their life time.  It would have been 1 but color came into play so the black and white was replaced.  And I don’t remember ever having a phone not work.  The only reason they got a new phone was because you can’t do the prompt stuff with an old rotary phone, gotta have those little buttons to press.

Today, I think I need to get with the program and when I finally figure out how to use something just accept the fact that it is time to get a new one.