21 Things That Became Obsolete This Decade

#6 Maps

Sorry, no. There may be alternatives to maps now, but maps will still be around for quite some time. There isn't cell service everywhere, and a GPS is not the end-all-be-all of navigation. I can take a map and a compass out into the boondocks through rivers and rain and ice and mud and brush and still find my way (which in some circumstances can be a life or death thing). Electronics are a good complement to maps, but they are not a 100% replacement yet.

Also, I'm surprised they missed CRTs. That's a pretty big change that's affected huge numbers of people.

#21 on the list: Paper.

"Probably the biggest casualty of the decade. With most communication now conducted online, magazines and newspapers crumbling, and e-readers increasing in popularity, paper is now on serious life support.

It's likely we'll look back and say that, after a 2,000 year reign, paper was killed by the noughties."

I absolutely disagree.

The way we use paper is shifting, yes: Paper's domain over long-term data storage is, obviously, shaken and falling, and that's a good thing — it's bulky, wasteful, and slow to search. So, too, are the news and the paper further in sunder, as scaled communication moves further into the digital domain.

But as a means and medium for thinking and creation, pen and paper are still orders of magnitude more effective than computerized tools except in very specific instances.

It's possible that I'm being a luddite here, and that the generation being born now will find using a computer for the initial stages in the creative process to be more natural than pen and paper. My suspicion, though, is that this simple medium persists because we've had a lot more time to refine it — far longer than the modern computer has existed.

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As an aside, does anyone have a better term for this decade than "noughties?" I've heard it a few times and can't shake the feeling that it's awful.

Email accounts you have to pay for? I don't remember ever paying for an email account, per se. They show a picture of an American Online graphic; I never used American Online, but weren't you paying for the whole service, not just email? I've had multiple email accounts that were tied to ISPs, but felt I was more paying for the overall internet service.

CDs? Maybe to a large degree, but one high-end jazz group I know of just released a new album strictly on CD, because they don't feel that digital distribution options offer enough sound quality.

Getting film developed? Definitely fading, but as I look at photographs that I've taken over the past few years, I like the overall appearance of the photos taken on Fuji NPH-400 film over those taken with a $3000 digital SLR camera.

I think they should also credit RedBox for the decrease in rental stores. There are a lot of people out there who use it, either because they aren't internet-savvy or for other reasons.

As for faxing, I sadly encounter way too many occasions where it is still used.

Here's hoping that in the next decade, we'll see a drastic improvement of local governments posting things online. I just received a letter stating that unspecified changes were being made to a the zoning codes of a district only referred to as a number, specifically in regards to areas zoned as one of two different two-letter abbreviations. For full text, I have to go to city hall. They might as well have printed it on Vogon letterhead