25 “Breakthrough” Technologies That Are Obsolete Now!

Why are we humans so resistant to learning? Every generation believes it has reinvented the wheel – in the form of novel technologies that hardly ever live up to the hype. Since the middle of the last century, digital development has continued to accelerate, and with it the number of supposed innovations that have turned out to be non-starters. To commemorate them, a Reddit thread has been opened that revolves around the following question: “What is something that you actually remember being new technology, but is now obsolete?”

Here are some good answers: 25 supposedly innovative technologies that no one cares about anymore!

#1 WebTV

“An internet box that connected to the phone line and the tv. Internet access without a full-on computer!”

#2 Digital photo frames

“Everyone seemed to have one for about 3 weeks and now I haven’t seen one in about 10 years.”

Source: flickr.com

#3 Infrared

“Infrared to send files from one phone to another.”

Source: flickr.com

#4 Zip drives

“In college we had to try to save all our massive Photoshop files to max 500MB ZIP disks.”

Source: flickr.com

#5 Laserdiscs

“Gigantic album sized CDs, really.”

Source: flickr.com

#6 T9 texting

“I learned an entirely new way of relaying language and will never use it again.”

Source: flickr.com

#7 Caller ID boxes

“I used to think we were so fancy since we had the little box with the screen that showed name and number before anyone else we knew had one.”

Source: flickr.com

#8 CD Players especially in cars

“I thought the best thing ever would be to have a CD changer in my car. Now my car doesn’t even have a CD player.”

Source: flickr.com

#9 Digital cameras

“My dad was super excited the first time he brought a digital camera home for us to play with. It was a brick that took 8 photos and saved them onto a floppy disc. It even came with a floppy disc carry case so you didn’t have to worry about losing them.”

#10 Interactive encyclopaedias on CDs

“I remember being amazed as a kid, so much information, sound clips, music, images, even videos and easy search. Now you just have all of that and so much more on wiki.”

#11 Flip phones

“I remember when the Motorola Razr was cutting edge.”

Source: flickr.com

#12 Palm Pilots

“This was the first thing I thought of. I remember my uncle had one and I thought it was the coolest thing I had ever seen. Like something from Star Trek.”

Source: flickr.com

#13 VCRs

„I remember when they cost close to $1000 CDN and were the greatest thing ever.”

Source: flickr.com

#14 TiVo

“It was a big deal to be able to automatically record shows, and an even bigger deal to be able to skip commercials. Now, we just watch it on-demand.”

Source: flickr.com

#15 Dial-up internet

“I loved being able to do madlibs, chat with people on IRC or Yahoo, get Mortal Kombat fatalities, and print off naked pictures from playboy that took me 20 minutes to download lol. I was so amazed!!”

Source: flickr.com

#16 Cordless phones

“When they first dropped it was the newest thing imaginable. Flash forward a few years and no one even has a house phone.”

Source: flickr.com

#17 Dedicated Mp3 players

“Going from a walkman to a discman to an mp3 player was huge. ‚I can have ALL my albums on this one device!?‘ These days people look at me funny for not just using my phone. But the ipod classic is still the best music device I’ve ever found.”

Source: flickr.com

#18 Zune

“Having hardware buttons, an audio jack, more storage, and not needing to worry about budgeting your battery power makes for a far superior device to a phone.”

#19 Custom ringtones

“It used to be such a huge industry back in the day and people would actually pay money for shitty 8bit versions of songs to play when people called them. Now most people I know just keep their phones on vibrate or silent and use default ringtones.”

Source: flickr.com

#20 NGPS devices

“ No more printing out directions, the little machine will direct you. Pretty much immediately the same exact thing was added to smartphones. I bet my dad still has his GPS in his glovebox dusty as all hell.”

Source: flickr.com

#21 Phonecards

“You’d buy a phonecard so that you could use it in a payphone and never have to worry about having change. They converted half the phoneboxes to take them which must have been a major infrastructure operation. This must have been the 1980s I think. Now completely forgotten.”

#22 Word processors

“Like a typewriter with a tiny bit of memory so you could make corrections before it printed the type. Before that it was either strike through or white out. Sort of.”

#23 Minidisc

“Was great for snowboarding because it wouldn’t skip like CDs and i could store a ton of music on one disk.”

Source: flickr.com

#24 Pager

“Wanted a pager in middle school but my parents told me pagers were only for drug dealers…”

#25 Answering machines

“Like the old style with mini cassette tapes.”

Which of these technology trends do you remember? Tell us in the FB comments!

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