Today's post is not about current cool technologies, but those that were cool. I feel nostalgic for my IBM XT with a 5 megabyte hard drive, my Motorola brick phone, my 5 1/4 floppy collection, my Atari console and my Epson dot matrix printer. There was a time when all of these technologies were uber-cool - only cutting edge technologists were willing to take the risk on early, unproven products.
The Boston Globe recently posted a cool technology retrospective using this classification
Ancient: seen in museums only, unusable, unfixable
Antique: unusable, unfixable
Vintage: usable, old, ironic, cool
Outdated: still available in stores, but barely used
It's amazing how fast cool technologies become outdated technologies. I was in a meeting of technology leaders yesterday and only one person had a Blackberry, lamenting that his organization had not yet moved on to something more modern.
What's your favorite vintage, formerly cool technology?
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