How Stuff Works: What went obsolete in the last decade?

As we stand here at the beginning of a new decade, have you thought about everything that died in the last one? As new technologies rise up, they often kill off older technologies. Let's review some of the death and destruction that has occurred over the last 10 years.

For example, think about the record store. This is hard to believe today, but just 10 years ago people bought all of their music at record stores. Napster, which marked the beginning of the end for record stores, was invented in June of 1999. Prior to that, no one had ever heard of an MP3 file. Napster made the MP3 file a household name, and dramatically boosted the idea of portable MP3 players (invented in 1998). The iPod first appeared in 2001, along with iTunes. With the rise of digital music, the need to go to a physical store to buy music died, and record stores started closing. Today they are almost all gone.

The CD is now in its death throes, as it is being replaced by electronic music files. And with death of CDs the concept of an "album" has lost much of its power. People now buy their songs one at a time.

The cassette tape also died. It lived alongside the CD because you could record onto a cassette, and cars and stereos all had cassette players. The portable MP3 player killed the cassette.

Other forms of tape died as well. DVD players were still rare in 2000, having been first introduced in 1997 in the United States, so everyone was using video tape cassettes for their videos. Most answering machines still used tape and camcorders all used tape in 2000. Video cassettes have been completely replaced by DVDs. Camcorders may still use tape, but more and more the tape is replaced by flash memory, so this last vestige of tape is about to disappear as well.

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via dailyme.com

Posted via web from Fred's posterous