Telegram service ending soon - have any other info technologies actually died?
Hello everyone, Slate has an little interesting story, framed with the idea that "dead" technologies take a very long time to actually depart. Apparently the last telegram will soon be sent, as India is discontinuing the service as a result of widening losses. http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2013/06/17/death_of_the_telegraph_wo rld_s_last_telegram_to_be_sent_in_india_on_july.html. According to the original story http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Asia-South-Central/2013/0614/India-to-send-wo rld-s-last-telegram.-Stop the system was down to its last 998 workers and was handling only about 5,000 messages a day. Of course, it's only really with a service based technology that an actual date of death can be established. Something like a PC can just go into the attic and might one day come out again in working order. Even pneumatic tubes, a retro technology favorite, are still in use in some settings. Punched cards are still used in voting machines. Vacuum tubes are still used in expensive amplifiers. According to Wikipedia even semaphore flags are still "used during underway replenishment at sea." So, can anyone come up with another information technology that has definitively and verifiably vanished completely from use? Specific products don't count. Tom
Thanks for the article.
So, can anyone come up with another information technology that has definitively and verifiably vanished completely from use? Specific products don’t count.
Maybe http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heliograph Rob
The horse-drawn Zeppelin? Dag On Jun 18, 2013, at 10:44 AM, rduarte wrote:
Thanks for the article.
So, can anyone come up with another information technology that has definitively and verifiably vanished completely from use? Specific products don’t count.
Maybe http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heliograph
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-- Dag Spicer Senior Curator Computer History Museum 1401 N. Shoreline Blvd Mountain View, CA 94043 650.810.1035 direct 650.810.1055 fax Follow Us: CHM Blog I Facebook I Twitter I YouTube
This question is the topic of the dead media project ( http://www.deadmedia.org/), which is itself dead. My favorite nominations: The Myriorama. Once you have a motion picture, a motorized three-mile-long panoramic painting on rollers (shown while a performer narrates and plays the piano) fails to draw a crowd. Although actually now that I think of it I would pay to see a myriorama today. The Telephonic Newspaper (e.g., http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telefon_H%C3%ADrmond%C3%B3). Christian So, can anyone come up with another information technology that has
definitively and verifiably vanished completely from use? Specific products don’t count.
This was the subject, wasn't it, of Bruce Sterling's Dead Media List, which has itself met a similar fate? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_Media_Project http://web.archive.org/web/20071019055700/http://www.deadmedia.org/notes/ind... http://www.conceptlab.com/problems/ Though I guess Tom didn't stipulate media specifically. Rob MacDougall Associate Professor & Graduate Chair, Department of History Lawson Hall 2237 Western University London, Ontario, Canada N6A 3K7 519-661-2111 +85305 On Tue, Jun 18, 2013 at 11:39 AM, Thomas Haigh <thaigh@computer.org> wrote:
Hello everyone,****
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Slate has an little interesting story, framed with the idea that “dead” technologies take a very long time to actually depart. Apparently the last telegram will soon be sent, as India is discontinuing the service as a result of widening losses. http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2013/06/17/death_of_the_telegraph_wo.... According to the original story http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Asia-South-Central/2013/0614/India-to-send-wo... system was down to its last 998 workers and was handling only about 5,000 messages a day.****
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Of course, it’s only really with a service based technology that an actual date of death can be established. Something like a PC can just go into the attic and might one day come out again in working order. Even pneumatic tubes, a retro technology favorite, are still in use in some settings. Punched cards are still used in voting machines. Vacuum tubes are still used in expensive amplifiers. According to Wikipedia even semaphore flags are still “used during underway replenishment at sea.”****
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So, can anyone come up with another information technology that has definitively and verifiably vanished completely from use? Specific products don’t count.****
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Tom****
_______________________________________________ This email is relayed from members@sigcis.org, the email discussion list of SHOT SIGCIS. The list archives are at http://sigcis.org/pipermail/members/ and you can change your subscription options at http://sigcis.org/mailman/listinfo/members
Hello, Among information technologies that have completely vanished from use and been replaced with computer systems, many devices designed for bank operations may qualify, such as: - Anti-fraud machines like this Protectograph * - Mechanical check sorters, like the NCR machine we recently excavated from the backrooms of BNP Paribas. it is not only the machines which have disappeared, but also most of their functions, as the cheques themselves are gradually vanishing from the scene, as did clearing houses in the past decades. Best, Pierre Pierre Mounier-Kuhn CNRS & Universite Paris-Sorbonne http://pups.paris-sorbonne.fr/pages/aff_livre.php?Id=838 http://www.koyre.cnrs.fr/IMG/pdf/mounier-kuhn_cv_anglais.pdf * Le 18 juin 13 à 17:39, Thomas Haigh a écrit :
Hello everyone,
Slate has an little interesting story, framed with the idea that “dead” technologies take a very long time to actually depart. Apparently the last telegram will soon be sent, as India is discontinuing the service as a result of widening losses.http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2013/06/17/death_of_the_telegraph_wo... . According to the original story http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Asia-South-Central/2013/0614/India-to-send-wo... the system was down to its last 998 workers and was handling only about 5,000 messages a day.
Of course, it’s only really with a service based technology that an actual date of death can be established. Something like a PC can just go into the attic and might one day come out again in working order. Even pneumatic tubes, a retro technology favorite, are still in use in some settings. Punched cards are still used in voting machines. Vacuum tubes are still used in expensive amplifiers. According to Wikipedia even semaphore flags are still “used during underway replenishment at sea.”
So, can anyone come up with another information technology that has definitively and verifiably vanished completely from use? Specific products don’t count.
Tom _______________________________________________ This email is relayed from members@sigcis.org, the email discussion list of SHOT SIGCIS. The list archives are athttp://sigcis.org/pipermail/members/ and you can change your subscription options at http://sigcis.org/mailman/listinfo/members
participants (6)
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Christian Sandvig -
Dag Spicer -
Pierre Mounier -
rduarte -
Rob MacDougall -
Thomas Haigh