Game over, man!
PRIVATE HICKS, Aliens
At this stage of the game, I am known as a late resistor to new technology. The flip phone I carry on purpose is the biggest sign of my attitude to tech. I am not a Luddite, but I fight the good fight. But you also need to know when to quit. I don't own an 8 track player or a VCR. Those two things represent the sad fact of tech extinction. It happens and will happen again. Here are my strategies for dealing with these extinctions when they come.
1. The Kindle/ebooks
I have already written about this one. Amazon has bricked their old pre-2012 devices to try and force people like me to buy a new device to be similarly bricked at a future date. Long before this, my wife convinced me to eschew paying for ebooks and buy physical books instead because she knew where it was all going to end. She was right. If you can't hold it in your hand, you don't own it.
I have capitulated on this and only buy physical books now. You can't brick physical books. As for my Kindle, it will keep working as long as I don't factory reset it. I can still use it, but I can't add to it without jailbreaking it. As for a battery swap, I am not going to waste my time on this. When it dies, I will bury the thing along with my regrets over buying it. We had a good run.
2. OAB TV
I have already written about my TV issues. Basically, my over-the-air broadcast dumb TV gave up the ghost. I was scheming to avoid buying a smart TV and getting another dumb TV. I am against smart TVs, Roku, paid streaming services, etc. Then, I heard about ATSC 3.0 which is a scheme by television broadcasters to go to a new standard that allows them to encrypt their broadcasts and demand a fee to watch the programs. Why would I ever pay for this?
I realize now that free broadcast TV is mortally wounded. Why waste money on a new set that I am never going to watch? My capitulation strategy was to buy a portable DVD player and return to watching physical media again. The wife enjoys free streaming content on Pluto, Tubi, YouTube, and Internet Archive. We do not pay for streaming subscription services like Netflix. For the DVD player, we have collected old movies and TV shows. We have more content than time to watch this stuff. I am also not a big fan of visual content as it fatigues my damaged brain.
I recommend that people measure how much they watch or could watch against what is available to possibly watch. They should have a meter for this like a water meter or an electric meter. The reality is that there is more content in existence now than you could ever consume in your lifetime. This is why I cut out cable TV over a decade ago in favor of OAB TV. As you can see, the empire strikes back later with streaming and ATSC 3.0.
Yes, the content today is atrocious and not worth watching. You aren't missing anything. But once in awhile, they make something good. I just buy the DVD. I don't have a capitulation strategy for the end of DVDs.
When I run out of stuff to watch, I will reconsider my resistance. That day is a long way off. As for ATSC 3.0, I expect it to fail spectacularly, but the damage will be irreversible.
Charlie's TV Issues
3. Blogger
I know that no Google service lasts forever. I learned this with the end of the beloved Google Reader. My capitulation strategy was to go to Feedly and Inoreader. I also learned to restrict myself to the free limit of the RSS readers and to subscribe to email newsletters to keep posted on my favorite sites. That was my capitulation strategy for that.
Blogger is how I publish to the world. I don't use social media or Substack. When Blogger ends, I will write longhand in notebooks that I have stored for this inevitability. I don't care so much about being read. I just know that I have to write. People wrote before the internet. They wrote longhand and with typewriters. Some were published while others were not. I have to remind myself that I am a writer. Being a blogger is a matter of publishing. Returning to absolute obscurity is something I would actually like. Whatever happens, I will keep scratching the writing itch.
4. The flip phone
I don't know how long I can keep using a flip phone. I hate smartphones, but the day is coming like with 8 track players when that option will vanish. I am fighting it hard, but I can't guarantee victory.
I hate the form factor of a smartphone, but they have some models that fold like my flip phone. They are expensive and not quite there yet. But I am inclined in that direction. The thing has to fold and fit in my shirt pocket. I am old and crusty like that.
I also hate the distracting nature of smartphones, but I have learned from the digital minimalism and dumbphone reddits that you can dumb down a smartphone to essential features. I would certainly do that. I recommend it to anyone who can't make the jump to a full dumbphone but still want to get their lives back.
The last thing is tactile buttons. I like buttons. I liked the old Blackberry devices for this reason alone, and I was sad to see them go down like they did. I hate tapping on touchscreen devices. This is why I use a Chromebook or a PC over an iPad or Android tablet device. Give me my buttons and keys!
I love my flip phone, and I pray that option never goes away. Seeing them experience a resurgence in popularity gives me hope that I never have to capitulate on this one. But I have a plan.
5. Terrestrial radio
This is the one that I think about the least because I think terrestrial radio has staying power. It has survived SirusXM satellite radio and the iPod. The only challenge now is in car streaming or using streaming over a smartphone. The simple fact is that people love turning on the radio especially during the morning and evening commutes. I don't see that going away.
AM radio might die. It was already dying when FM caught on, but it found new life with talk radio. People don't like static on the radio. Steely Dan even made a song about it. I live with the static because I am a radio nerd. I have heard stories about digital on the AM dial, but I think that idea is DOA as no one has gone out to get HD Radios for the digital offerings on the FM dial. I know I didn't get one.
Like with the OAB TV thing, the secret dream is to get listeners to pay some kind of subscription fee for the content they are getting now for free. They can try, and they will fail. I don't have a capitulation strategy for the end of terrestrial radio. I reckon I will enjoy the silence.
Conclusion
Those are my capitulation strategies for the end of some of my preferred tech options. What I have learned is that the only mistake is to give up the fight early. This is what I did with my iPod and my Kindle. I went with the new thing that didn't last. The answer to those disasters was to dial it back to the older and better options which were the Walkman and the physical book. As for the 8 track and the VCR, I didn't miss them when they went extinct. I stopped buying vinyl when cassettes came out, but I am happy to see that those two formats are still surviving. The bottom line is to never be hasty on these things. You have time which can be decades before you have to throw in the towel. You're not beaten until you're beaten.
