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Mike Elgan: 10 obsolete technologies to kill in 2010

Make the world a better place. Just say no to dumb tech.

December 24, 2009 06:00 AM ET

Computerworld - Some old-and-busted technologies die gracefully of natural causes. Pagers, PDAs, floppy disks -- they're gone, and good riddance.


Here are 10 dumb technologies we should get rid of in 2010:

1. Fax Machines

The fax machine was obsolete 15 years ago. When someone says "fax it to me," I always feel like I'm being punk'd. A fax machine is nothing more than a printer, scanner and an obsolete analog modem that work together to waste time, money, paper and electricity.




The mass delusion that perpetuates this obscenely inefficient technology is that paper "hard copy" is somehow more legitimate. In fact, gluing a copy of someone's stolen signature to a document, then faxing it, is the easiest way mask a forgery because of the low quality of fax output.

People, let's stop the madness. Just e-mail it.

2. 'Cigar lighter receptacle' plugs in cars





3. WWW

The original idea with Internet addresses is that a prefix would identify the type of service provided. So, for example, identifies Apple's "World-Wide Web" servers, and points to the company's offerings available via the "File Transfer Protocol."

Network administrators get to choose whether an address technically requires a "www." But browsers fill it in for you even when you don't type it.

That's why saying "www" as part of an address, printing it on business cards or typing it into your browser address box is always unnecessary. We stopped using "http://" years ago, and it's time to stop using "www" as well.

4. Business cards

Speaking of business cards, why do we still carry around 19th-century "calling cards"? When someone gives you a business card, they're giving you a tedious data entry job, one that most people never complete.


Besides, you should always learn in advance what you can about people you're going to meet, and that's a good time to enter their contact information. And if you just run into someone, and exchange contact information, it's best to do it by e-mail or some other means on the spot, with cell phones.

Adding someone to your contacts should involve double clicking or, at most, copying and pasting -- not data entry.

5. Movie rental stores


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