The Obsolete List

One of the best parts about the end of the year is all the "best of", "worst of", and "everything in between of" lists that are published. And since this is the end of a decade too (okay, maybe the decade technically goes until 2010), we get to have all those lists times ten!

One of my favorites so far, from Business Insider, a list of 21 items that have become obsolete in the past decade.

Some of them come quickly to mind (Dial-up Internet, VCRs, Fax Machines), while others are things you might not immediately think of (Pay Phones, Long Distance Charges).

In some cases the list is almost incredible to think about. For example, PDAs (with their look-at-me-I'm-so-important fake plastic pen thingys) were not really all that common at the beginning of the decade, yet have already faded well into obsolescence. (Yes, I constructed that sentence specifically so I could use that last word).

Want another example? How about paying for E-mail. Remember those disks that AOL would send you with 50 free hours of Internet if you signed up for their email? And, more amazingly, people did it. Thank you to the market for making it possible for email to be a free, ad-revenue driven service.

So have some fun and remember how much better off we are than we were ten years ago.

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