My grandson has discovered “How the Grinch Stole Christmas” (the original cartoon version) and it quickly became a favorite. It’s not offered on the streaming service my daughter uses, so I offered to get him his very own copy. I went to my local Barnes and Noble because I knew it had a huge DVD section, including tons of selections for the holidays. Sadly, the key word turned out to be “had,” because when I arrived, all I saw was a big empty space where the DVDs and CDs used to be displayed.
I don’t know why I was surprised. I have heard that “no one uses DVD or CD players anymore,” so it stood to reason that stores were going to quit stocking them. And since I still have and use both devices, I guess that proves what I have long suspected: these days, I’m a nobody. That doesn’t particularly bother me, but thinking about the thousands of obsolete players and millions of useless DVDs and CDs destined for a landfill bothers me a lot.
When I first began using a digital camera, I kept the photo cards for all my pictures so I could always make more prints of them. Later, I learned to upload photos onto my computer, and then to the “cloud” for safe keeping. But my earlier digital photos are still stored on those little photo cards, and when I tried to upload them onto my new computer, I searched in vain for a slot to insert a photo card. Yes, I discovered I can buy an adapter that will help, but why in the world couldn’t the people who design new computers have simply included a slot for photo cards? If they had, I wouldn’t have to buy yet another gadget.
These days, we are constantly being urged to reuse and recycle as much as we possibly can, and with good reason. Wouldn’t it be nice if that applied to our tech devices as well? I understand that there will always be a “new and improved” version of everything we use, and that’s fine. But does making way for the new version always have to mean getting rid of the old? Yet all too often, that’s exactly what happens. A case in point being that my new computer is not only lacking a slot for my photo cards, but it also can’t seem to communicate with my (older, but still working) printer. So now I have to buy a new printer and figure out what to do with the old one.
I hate to admit it, but it does seem to me as if sometimes the old ways were a whole lot easier. My mother never worried about how she was going to store her photos, because she had a simple system: print them and stick them in a photo album. And even though they were taken many decades ago, I can still get out my baby photos and look at them any time I please, with no worries about compatibility, adapters or unnecessary waste. Apparently, back in 1958, they knew how make things last…….