This week at LWON we’re digging into the archives to celebrate the uncelebrated: inanimate objects. Many of them aren’t very impressive inanimate objects. And yet we love them.
I was inspired to propose this week of reruns by a piece former LWONer Tom Hayden wrote back in 2011 about the various functional, non-fancy things he has used and loved through the years–like his $20 MP3 player, which was unattractive but got the job done. He contrasted this with the shiny new iPod video that he bought, briefly owned, then lost.
I’ve been thinking about my Zune a lot since Steve Jobs passed away. You know, the revolutionary portable music device that lets users carry thousands of digitized songs around in a pocket or a purse? Oh wait, what am I saying — it’s not a Microsoft product I’ve been thinking about. I don’t have a Zune. I don’t even have an iPod. I have a Coby.
That’s right, a Coby. A cheap plastic mp3 player — basically a $19.99 flash drive with a headphone jack, a pixilated little screen, and controls that look a lot like the original iPod scroll wheel, without actually scrolling or being a wheel. It’s a piece of crap, really. And I love it.
Read the rest: In Praise Of Crap Technology
And please use the comments to tell us what crap technology you’ve kept going way beyond its natural life.
I’m kind of a cheapskate. The result is I have a lot of crappy technologies. Thing is they work and do most everything I want it to. I recently found out my smart phone won’t play Pokeman, but I consider that a feature.
Heh. Helen knows the answer for me: My ancient flip phone. It is awesome. (And it doesn’t even have a keyboard, which I think Tom’s does…)
I’m curious whether Tom is still enjoying the dumbphone life.
Oh, I should share mine! This isn’t really crap technology, but it’s quite old: I bought a fancy iPod, the first one that played video, around the same time as Tom, and it’s coming up on 10 years old now and I still use (and love) it. Its battery died four or five years ago, but it turns out you can buy a very cheap kit to fix that.