This session invites you to:
Reconsider what “obsolete” really means
Discover defunct technologies and discredited ideas
Follow one irresistible deep dive into the Right-to-Repair Campaign
“‘But I don’t want to go among
mad people,’
Alice remarked.
‘Oh, you can’t help that,’
said the Cat.
‘We’re all mad here.’”
— Lewis Carroll,
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland
What Is This, Anyway?
What counts as obsolete and who decides?
Obsolescence isn't just about aging tech. It can reflect shifting values, power structures, and design priorities. Sometimes things fade out for a reason (like bloodletting). Sometimes they resurface (like vinyl records or medieval remedies).
Key terms & timeline to explore:
Technological obsolescence - When a device or system becomes outdated and is replaced by newer, more efficient technology, even if the older version still works.
Example: Floppy disks once stored data; now they’re museum artifacts.
Cultural memory - The way societies remember (or forget) the past, through stories, rituals, media, and preserved artifacts. It often determines what gets labeled obsolete.
Example: Vinyl records were once dead tech, but cultural memory helped resurrect them as retro cool.
Phlogiston Theory - A now-discredited 17th–18th century scientific theory claiming that a fire-like element called phlogiston was released during combustion. (Disproving it helped birth modern Chemistry and Oxygen Theory.)
Example: Before we understood oxygen, scientists believed burning was the act of losing phlogiston.
Discontinued professions (e.g., switchboard operators, knocker-uppers) - Jobs that once existed but disappeared due to automation, societal change, or evolving technology.
Examples: Switchboard operators who manually connected phone calls, & Knocker-uppers tapped on windows with sticks to wake people before alarm clocks existed
Legacy systems in computing - Older software or hardware that is still in use, even if it’s outdated, because it’s too costly or risky to replace.
Example: Some government databases still rely on COBOL code written in the 1970s.
Retired Metaphors - Metaphors once common can now sound quaint, puzzling, or entirely forgotten.
Example: Even in retirement, he kept to his ivory tower, spending his days with classical music and literature. It is a metaphor describing a place of seclusion or disconnection from the real world.
Why Does It Matter?
In an age of constant upgrade, studying what we leave behind reveals who we think we are now.
Who decides when something is “no longer relevant”?
How do marketing and innovation cycles influence what we discard?
Is anything truly obsolete if someone still finds joy in it?
What would a modern Museum of Lost Work contain?
Discover
Read
Slade, G. (2006). Made to Break: Technology and Obsolescence in America. Harvard University Press.
— Explores America’s obsession with disposability and the history of planned obsolescence.
Parikka, J. (2012). What Is Media Archaeology? Polity Press.
— A deep dive into forgotten media, digital decay, and how technological ruins tell stories.
Tung-Hui Hu. (2015). A Prehistory of the Cloud. MIT Press.
— Unmasks the mythology behind cloud computing, revealing its analog roots and hidden legacy systems.
Museum of Obsolete Objects (archived YouTube playlist)
Step into a digital time capsule of devices that no longer beep or blink.
The Book of Imaginary Media (PDF)
Curious concepts that never quite existed—but influenced what did.
One Good Thing: 11 Brilliant Ways To Repurpose Disposable Household Items
This article offers practical and creative ideas for turning everyday throwaways into useful tools, like using cereal box liners as piping bags or mesh produce bags as dish scrubbers.
Wayback Machine: To use it, simply enter the URL of the website you wish to explore into the search bar. You'll then be presented with a timeline and calendar interface, displaying the dates when snapshots of that site were captured. Clicking on a specific date will allow you to view how the website appeared at that time.
Note: Use the Wayback Machine to - See how a library homepage or institutional site looked 10 years ago, revisit old web layouts, policies, or resources that have since changed or disappeared, or track the evolution of online publications or digital exhibits. Lots of fun!
Not all forgotten things are junk. Some are just waiting.
Curious Finds:
Right to Repair—iFixit Campaign
"We Must Secure Our Right to Repair Everything We Own—Access to parts, tools, and repair information should be fair and affordable." - Right to Repair Campaign
This movement is a response to planned obsolescence: when products are intentionally designed to have a limited lifespan or be difficult to fix. E-Waste Concerns: Unrepairable devices contribute to a massive global electronics waste problem. Monopoly on repair: Many manufacturers restrict who can repair their products, driving up costs and reducing consumer control.
Before computers, libraries used a library card catalog, a long wooden cabinet full of small drawers, to help you find books. Each book had a typed index card with its details:
Title, Author, Subject, and a Call number (where it was located on the shelf).
You’d pull out a drawer, flip through alphabetized cards like a recipe box, and jot down the call number to find the book. Some books had multiple cards, one by author, one by title, one by subject, so you could search in different ways.
It was slow, hands-on, and wonderfully analog. You didn’t click, you flipped through it.
Retired Metaphors
"Hang up the phone" – from when phones had receivers, you physically placed back onto the cradle
"Broken record" – refers to a vinyl record that skips or repeats due to damage
"Roll the window down" – comes from manual window cranks in cars
"Don’t touch that dial" – used for analog knobs on TVs and radios
"Filming" a video – even though no actual film is used anymore
These phrases linger, even if the original reference has vanished. They act as ghost stories within our vocabulary, strange reminders of tools and habits long gone. They survive even when their original references are gone, offering a linguistic time capsule.
Why Does This Persist?
Cultural momentum - Language changes slowly. Once a phrase becomes idiomatic, we keep using it even if its source fades.
Shared nostalgia - They evoke familiarity or a sense of tradition.
No clear replacement - Some metaphors express ideas so well that we keep using them despite the lost context.
Exploring retired metaphors is a way to study history through language. It reminds us that communication carries echoes of the tools and technologies we once held in our hands. 