Technology That Will Vanish in The Next Five Years - Except for the things on this list that still have a use

[Jarolleon]

Was this written by some gadget obsessed tardlet? Wired headphones aren't going anywhere, cloud based storage has too many downsides to replace portable drives. Also a horrific security risk.

Those houses in Deus Ex Mankind Divided with all the smart home stuff are going to be a hacker's wet dream. Does this guy know that or are they too busy drooling over all that tech?

Cable TV is the most likely one to vanish. Or just turn into a zombie. Maybe digital cameras. The rest read like a consoomer who doesn't ask questions.

Maybe he's a hacker who wants the world to be so filled with glaring security flaws that the ability to hack makes you into a techno-wizard.

 

[Still Anonymous For This]

Oh, I mean like, you can still order new cassette tapes in bulk and record your album onto them for sale. You can even get new Minidiscs, albeit you have to order them from Japan.

As for VHS, I think that's much less likely. With music, tapes still sound fine to anyone who isn't an audiophile as long as you have a decent player, and you can still use just about any headphones, since everything's been using the 3.5mm jack for decades. Even a lot of Bluetooth cans have a port for an aux cable. VHS tapes, on the other hand, look like ass on any HDTV, so you need a CRT for the right experience. CRTs are so heavy and take up so much room that you sort of need to set aside a special space in your home for one, and that's not gonna fly with anyone outside of the serious enthusiasts. Not to mention, the 16:9 switchover and the public's tolerance for pan 'n' scan eroding hasn't helped matters, so I sincerely doubt we'll see much in the way of a VHS revival. Maybe we'll see special editions of classic horror movies in a Blu-Ray & VHS box set, so you can watch some classic Rob Zombie flicks on your CRT at night for the full effect. But that's about all I could really envision with a VHS revival.

edit: As for like, Beta and Laserdisc, there just aren't enough players out there even for late-coming enthusiasts. Like me. I still don't have a Beta or a Laserdisc player, and they're a little pricey second-hand when I've just been hoping to stumble into one at a garage sale. Hell, at this point, I think UMDs are more accessible than Beta or Laserdisc, simply because it's easier to find a PSP.

I bought a Samsung CRT a few years back to watch the original Star Wars trilogy my parents bought me on VHS in the mid-90s before Lucas ruined them with cheap CGI. That thing is ungodly heavy. It's in my basement and it will never leave my basement.

I've started collecting VHS since then. Jurassic Park, old Hammer films, the first two Ghostbusters, and a bunch of other stuff. VHS is still ludicrously cheap. That being said, it honestly is just a nostalgia thing for me. Me and the missus go into the basement, leave our phones upstairs, and just chill and watch old movies together. Reminds me of being a kid and watching movies you'd pick out from Blockbuster or Hollywood Video.

I think it might pick up a bit, thanks to James Rolfe and the whole "retro 80s" thing going on in pop culture, but outside of nostalgia (and seeing the almost-legit original Star Wars), I'm not quite sure what the point would be. If there were actual brick-and-mortar stores you could still go to, to rent old VHS movies, I could totally see the appeal. There's no real "feeling" behind the way you look for a movie on Netflix or order one on Amazon or even on Redbox. Problem is that most VHS movies can be had for $2 or less so even if you had a retro store that caters to that crowd, your customers could buy the movies outright for what you rent them for.

Hell, I recently picked up Jurassic Park: The Lost World on VHS in the original holographic case. $2.50. I would have thought something like that would have been a collector piece. Nope. Nobody gives a shit about VHS.

 

[usernames can change now!]

Most of the shit on that list is retarded shit, but you know what will be obsolete soon? And it fucking pains me, because holy shit this is going to be so fucking terrible in about a decade?

Any semblance of car audio standards. DIN is already pretty much dead. Crutchfield lists the post-2010s Equinoxes as being "unable to be upgraded", and that's increasingly true of most cars. How fucking terrible will a 2015 Equinox stereo be in 2035? It wasn't good when it was new. Used cars are going to be fucked for a long time.

 

[Dom Cruise]

Do you think VHS (or Beta lol) could ever make a comeback too?

Oh, I mean like, you can still order new cassette tapes in bulk and record your album onto them for sale. You can even get new Minidiscs, albeit you have to order them from Japan.

As for VHS, I think that's much less likely. With music, tapes still sound fine to anyone who isn't an audiophile as long as you have a decent player, and you can still use just about any headphones, since everything's been using the 3.5mm jack for decades. Even a lot of Bluetooth cans have a port for an aux cable. VHS tapes, on the other hand, look like ass on any HDTV, so you need a CRT for the right experience. CRTs are so heavy and take up so much room that you sort of need to set aside a special space in your home for one, and that's not gonna fly with anyone outside of the serious enthusiasts. Not to mention, the 16:9 switchover and the public's tolerance for pan 'n' scan eroding hasn't helped matters, so I sincerely doubt we'll see much in the way of a VHS revival. Maybe we'll see special editions of classic horror movies in a Blu-Ray & VHS box set, so you can watch some classic Rob Zombie flicks on your CRT at night for the full effect. But that's about all I could really envision with a VHS revival.

edit: As for like, Beta and Laserdisc, there just aren't enough players out there even for late-coming enthusiasts. Like me. I still don't have a Beta or a Laserdisc player, and they're a little pricey second-hand when I've just been hoping to stumble into one at a garage sale. Hell, at this point, I think UMDs are more accessible than Beta or Laserdisc, simply because it's easier to find a PSP.

The last time I watched a VHS tape was a copy of The Shining on a CRT at a vacation rental home circa 2010.

And from what I remember the quality surprisingly wasn't bad, it was totally watchable.

But you need a CRT though, otherwise VHS does look totally horrendous.

 

[Syaoran Li]

Whoever wrote this article is an idiot and a shill for the cloud storage industry,

The only ones on that list that actually could die out completely in five to ten years would be cable TV and incandescent lighting and possibly 2G.

Physical data storage will never go away fully, and neither will Blu-Ray and DVD.

Hell, Blu-Ray was supposed to be the successor to DVD and it didn't kill it like DVD killed VHS. Instead, they co-existed and as long as our copyright laws continue to be perma-fucked by Disney, DVD and Blu-Ray will always be around in some form or another because some titles just won't be on streaming services even if they are very popular and well-beloved.

 

[ToroidalBoat]

But you need a CRT though, otherwise VHS does look totally horrendous.

I must be used to standard definition. I watched a VHS a few hours ago, and it looked OK on my LCD (VCR out is RWY cables).

 

[Duncan Hills Coffee]

I bought a Samsung CRT a few years back to watch the original Star Wars trilogy my parents bought me on VHS in the mid-90s before Lucas ruined them with cheap CGI. That thing is ungodly heavy. It's in my basement and it will never leave my basement.

I've started collecting VHS since then. Jurassic Park, old Hammer films, the first two Ghostbusters, and a bunch of other stuff. VHS is still ludicrously cheap. That being said, it honestly is just a nostalgia thing for me. Me and the missus go into the basement, leave our phones upstairs, and just chill and watch old movies together. Reminds me of being a kid and watching movies you'd pick out from Blockbuster or Hollywood Video.

I think it might pick up a bit, thanks to James Rolfe and the whole "retro 80s" thing going on in pop culture, but outside of nostalgia (and seeing the almost-legit original Star Wars), I'm not quite sure what the point would be. If there were actual brick-and-mortar stores you could still go to, to rent old VHS movies, I could totally see the appeal. There's no real "feeling" behind the way you look for a movie on Netflix or order one on Amazon or even on Redbox. Problem is that most VHS movies can be had for $2 or less so even if you had a retro store that caters to that crowd, your customers could buy the movies outright for what you rent them for.

Hell, I recently picked up Jurassic Park: The Lost World on VHS in the original holographic case. $2.50. I would have thought something like that would have been a collector piece. Nope. Nobody gives a shit about VHS.

I started collecting VHS tapes recently. I guess I'm just lucky enough to have at least several CRTs lying around because I've never watched one on an HDTV and I can't imagine how it'd look.

I can vouch for the cheapness of VHS tapes these days. I went thrift store shopping and one of the stores had some insane deal, like 6 tapes for $3, ended up with Blade, Rumble in the Bronx, Final Destination, and Saving Private Ryan. I even ended up getting the last Star Wars boxset before the Special Editions for really cheap too; I was already planning on finding that boxset online and I was expecting it to be far more expensive, but I found it in some thrift store for like $2.

I kinda hope that a VHS revival doesn't happen, not because I hate the format (in fact I'm oddly fascinated with it because it was on the way out when I was young), but because I adore how cheap they are now. I collect vinyl records too, and the cost of vinyl has been increasing; now they cost something like $25-30 when just 10 years ago you could buy 'em for $10.

 

[Marco Fucko]

3. Gaming Consoles

It breaks my heart to know that in a couple of years we won't have gaming consoles. Only because there's a better replacement in store.
With the rollout of cloud gaming, there won't be a need to have a big box at your home. Plus, with cloud gaming services like Google's Stadia and Microsoft's Project XCloud you'll be able to play high-definition games on any device! All you’ll need is a good internet connection.

Consoles will be around for at least another generation, knocking it out of the five year window in this article just barely. Stadia's a joke (noticeable input latency, not utilizing hardware as much as they theoretically could for resolution/framerate options) and even if Xbox's game stream rolls out and is fine, I can absolutely see people keeping local consoles on TVs/Monitors for better game feel.

Before anyone says PC, I agree with you. But, consoles have larger install bases, so the intersection between "serious" gamers and casuals can be found there. Do you really think all the streamers/content creators are going to accept Brawl levels of input lag, let alone guys who are really into fighting games? If Stadia isn't seen as a success it will likely be quietly killed off over time, and if the streaming Xbox can't help make sales numbers to catch up or match Sony the same thing will occur. I hate to try and predict so far out but if Xbox fails this upcoming gen they're either going back to the 360 design ethos or dying out.

What we think we know of Sony seems to be them doubling down on the PS4: won't be as powerful as Series X, but will likely be cheaper, and if hardware back compat is true then that will help roll over their success this generation into the PS5.

Remember: one of the things that contributed to Xbone performing so bad this gen that they haven't published sales numbers in a while was the system supposedly being online only at the introductory presentation. Gamers are fine with using the internet to play deathmatch, they are not fine with HAVING to use the internet to play a campaign.

 

[Pissmaster]

Consoles will be around for at least another generation, knocking it out of the five year window in this article just barely. Stadia's a joke (noticeable input latency, not utilizing hardware as much as they theoretically could for resolution/framerate options) and even if Xbox's game stream rolls out and is fine, I can absolutely see people keeping local consoles on TVs/Monitors for better game feel.

Before anyone says PC, I agree with you. But, consoles have larger install bases, so the intersection between "serious" gamers and casuals can be found there. Do you really think all the streamers/content creators are going to accept Brawl levels of input lag, let alone guys who are really into fighting games? If Stadia isn't seen as a success it will likely be quietly killed off over time, and if the streaming Xbox can't help make sales numbers to catch up or match Sony the same thing will occur. I hate to try and predict so far out but if Xbox fails this upcoming gen they're either going back to the 360 design ethos or dying out.

What we think we know of Sony seems to be them doubling down on the PS4: won't be as powerful as Series X, but will likely be cheaper, and if hardware back compat is true then that will help roll over their success this generation into the PS5.

Remember: one of the things that contributed to Xbone performing so bad this gen that they haven't published sales numbers in a while was the system supposedly being online only at the introductory presentation. Gamers are fine with using the internet to play deathmatch, they are not fine with HAVING to use the internet to play a campaign.

Yeah, I really don't even think we'll live to see gaming consoles go away. If I went back to 1990 and went on TV to talk about how great Nintendo's NES was, and how in 30 years from then, we'll... still be using dedicated hardware from Nintendo, still with controllers with buttons, and still with proprietary cartridges, even, I'd imagine a lot of people wouldn't believe me. But, jump ahead another 30 years to 2050, and I wouldn't be surprised if Nintendo were still churning out dedicated machines with little proprietary cartridges, because lo and behold, people like holding physical objects with their favorite media on them.

As for game streaming, something I've mentioned in the Stadia thread is that it only seems to appeal to people who aren't actually into video games. Trying to use your phone with a game controller is a crapshoot in many different ways that aren't prevalent until you've tried it, and people tend to only play their games in one place with one kind of device, anyway. What's the point of Stadia and all its problems if you're only able to play it through a Chromecast Ultra hooked up to the one TV you own, anyway? Just plug in any other console and you'll get a better experience. And yeah, the timing issues with fighting games and the like make it unplayable to anyone who's especially serious about their game. It's just not a good solution.

Though I'd never expect a guy who finds lightswitches to be too much to handle to understand any kind of nuances with input timing, and how satisfying an immediate reaction can be to a well-timed button press, with minimal latency. This nigga 14 years ago would have said bowling alleys are all gonna shut down because nobody will want to go bowling the moment they buy Wii Sports and play the bowling game on there.

 

[Ivan Shatov]

I have all of the Monty Python recordings - the show, the live appearances, the movies, everything - on VHS and DVD.

Oddly, watching them on VHS is more satisfying. It's easier to get the jokes because the picture quality is so low. The animations make more sense because they were not originally made in HD.

One of the things that bother's me about today's media is so much of it goes away so fast. 10 years from now, we're not going to remember what the good YouTube videos were. Physical purchases are as much a way to commemorate a monumental achievement as a way to continue enjoying them.

 

[AmpleApricots]

I threw all my VHS tapes out. Some I gave away to somebody who liked VHS like people in this thread, like some old boxed versions of star wars. I used to have a ton of that stuff, also floppy disks and later CDs. What I really didn't enjoy back in the day was to sort through that stuff, and how much room it all took up, that's what I mostly enjoy about modern media.

The quality never bothered me though. You know, human senses are all kinda shit anyways and rely on trickery to make it all work, your brain isn't a perfect signal processor, that's just what the 8k TV salespeople want you to think. Also if the movie is shit, it won't be any less shit in HD.

 

[Green Man]

I mean, regardless of 'obsolescence', what the author of the article fails to understand is that there will always be niches for pretty much all of these products, and niche isn't even quite the right word. Enthusiasts and hobbyists will pretty much always be using most of this technology. The only thing they got right is *maybe* incandescent lightbulbs, I do see those going away simply because they're inefficient. The rest of it? Nonsense.

Wired headphones are going away? Bullshit. There's still a pretty big 'audiophile' community who are buying high-end wired headphones, DACs, amplifiers, etc. As cringy as that community can sometimes be, they are absolutely correct when they say high-end wired headphones can deliver sound quality that wireless headphones simply can't. I'm not referring to Beats by Dre either, those are trash. Plus, battery life is a concern, and just because Apple wants to remove functionality so they can sell you more proprietary peripherals, doesn't mean others are doing the same.

Remote controls aren't going anywhere either. Contrary to popular opinion, not everyone wants to pay for a wiretap, voice controls still regularly get things wrong, and not everyone wants to rely on 'the cloud', voice commands or phone apps to do something as simple as adjusting a thermostat, turning on the TV or turning on their lamp. Infact, 'smarthome' concepts are still mostly a gimmick at this point.

Gaming consoles aren't going anywhere either. They've still got a big market share so why on Earth would they stop producing them?

Digital cameras are developing, not going away. Many of them still offer more settings and better picture quality than smartphones. Hell, analog cameras are still around and making somewhat of a resurgence among hobbyists and enthusiasts.

Conventional, physical locks are CERTAINLY not going anywhere. Electronic locks and similar suffer from the same problem as most smarthome accessories. If the power goes out, and it eventually will, you're pretty much fucked. You won't be able to get into your god damned house unless you have a generator/backup battery or power supply, and while that's feasible, most people aren't going to spend that much money and time to configure it.

Incandescent lightbulbs, I'll give you that one, they are probably on their way out and have been for a number of years. Still, there are people using them simply because they haven't gone out and while their market share has dwindled, they're still on store shelves for people to purchase.

2G, I'll give them that one as well, it's on it's way out. However, a lot of physical tech still uses 2G and 3G signals to communicate. A lot of monitoring hardware for pump stations, water meters, substations, oil and gas wells, etc. use 2G and 3G to communicate information that they monitor. They'll eventually have to upgrade but as we know from all of the businesses still running XP on enterprise hardware, it likely won't happen quickly.

Even though cloud storage is getting better, a physical back-up is still a great thing to have. When you're preserving data, you want several layers of redundancy. External storage isn't going anywhere, it'll just improve.

Physical media is on the downturn, but many people still prefer to have a physical copy of something rather than paying for a digital copy that could disappear some day. Additionally, you'll always have collectors. Cloud-computing and cloud storage and digital downloads are fine and interesting in their own right, but the fundamental problem is, you're going to be putting someone else or some other entity in control of your data, your purchases and with cloud computing, even your hardware. Most people, myself included, don't like that at all. It's useful and convenient, sure, but services can go down, get breached or get discontinued. Then what? You're fucked. If, on the other hand, you lose your physical media/storage or damage it in some way, that's incumbent on you and nobody else. They still have not sufficiently addressed privacy, vulnerability and reliability problems in terms of cloud-storage [which still utilizes physical storage/media anyway at some point] enough to make it a viable replacement for currently existing tech.

Cable TV is going to be around for a long time yet, and it'll keep getting worse. Still, for a lot of older people, it's the only thing they know and streaming services still have a lot of issues before they become fully viable. To put it simply, people don't want to pay for ten different streaming services/subscriptions because of corporate/intellectual property fuckery. Without a doubt, cable will have to adapt and improve some, but it'll still stick around.

I think the author of this article just hasn't paid much attention to what things are like in the trenches. Most of the 'brave new world' type technologies that are developing are still deep in the stage of being gimmicks. The old standbys aren't going anywhere quite yet. They also act like all of this tech will just disappear one day and be replaced instantly. The military still uses floppy disks.

 

[Maggots on a Train v2]

Hell, I recently picked up Jurassic Park: The Lost World on VHS in the original holographic case. $2.50. I would have thought something like that would have been a collector piece. Nope. Nobody gives a shit about VHS.

Every time a baby boomer dies, the nearest thrift store will get hundreds of VHS tapes. I think the size alone makes them too bulky for most people to save.

 

[simulated goat]

I'll say as a guy with a car that has those fancy new wireless ignitions for his car: it's fucking shit. Sure it's all convenient with a push of a button, but the vehicle I deal with will be a stubborn ass and say "key not detected." Also I can imagine a regular lock being sturdier than an electronic one in that an electronic lock could be easy for one to break through with some hacking compared to a regular mechanical lock.

My car is not that fancy and only has the external manual lock, but the model is generally geared toward using an electronic lock system- it only has a single physical outside key lock. A week ago this area froze solid and so did my lock, the only lock to the car. In the past, I could usually get into a car via other locks. Now I gotta call roadside assistance to de-ice the damn thing. That shit was bad enough, I can't imagine not having any outside access, especially in an emergency.

Which brings me to a thought: Power for this shit. If the battery is dead can you still get in or possibly out?

ETA: Ain't no one taking my wired headphones or my external drive with all my cinemageddon downloads anywhere .

 

[c-no]

My car is not that fancy and only has the external manual lock, but the model is generally geared toward using an electronic lock system- it only has a single physical outside key lock. A week ago this area froze solid and so did my lock, the only lock to the car. In the past, I could usually get into a car via other locks. Now I gotta call roadside assistance to de-ice the damn thing. That shit was bad enough, I can't imagine not having any outside access, especially in an emergency.

Which brings me to a thought: Power for this shit. If the battery is dead can you still get in or possibly out?

ETA: Ain't no one taking my wired headphones or my external drive with all my cinemageddon downloads anywhere .

Gotta love the future in how the NEW and EXCITING technology can screw us over because the weather itself says "fuck you" as it gets colder. I live in an area that gets snow and I'm lucky to not have the lock get frozen solid though that's because it also has some sort of electronic sensor. Won't be surprised if the freezing temperatures can find a way to screw that over though.

 

[simulated goat]

Every time a baby boomer dies, the nearest thrift store will get hundreds of VHS tapes. I think the size alone makes them too bulky for most people to save.

There are nuggets out there, tapes worth quite a bit because the movie was never released on DVD, or done so in a shoddy or badly edited manner. I know a collector that still has VHS capability because of that.

 

[Ex Cummunicated Sasser HD]

Turns on incandescent bulb in American

I prefer them.

This is nearly a year old reply, but fuck it. Today, one of my lights went out, and I replaced it with a 100w halogen, just because I had it to hand. (Still got 2 left) Fuck me the difference was literal light/night and day. Admittedly I didn't have an LED in there before, I had an older Flouro eco bulb in there before, but just turned the light on. It came on instantly, didn't take 5 minutes to get there, and it is bright as fuck, and also not that weird blue hue that you get from LEDs. It's sad that once this bulb goes, I'll be having to use LED, because the bulb I replaced the flouro one with is now banned...

 

[sasazuka]

It came on instantly, didn't take 5 minutes to get there, and it is bright as fuck, and also not that weird blue hue that you get from LEDs.

The blue hue LED bulbs are the "Daylight" (~5000K color temperature) bulbs, I buy the ones with "warm" yellow colour temperature (~2700K) and don't have the blue hue problem.

 

[Ex Cummunicated Sasser HD]

Hell, I recently picked up Jurassic Park: The Lost World on VHS in the original holographic case. $2.50. I would have thought something like that would have been a collector piece. Nope. Nobody gives a shit about VHS.

Cassette audio tapes are starting to pick up as collectable now, some go for $100's whereas 10 years ago they were landfill. I can see VHS doing the same but VHS is still a newer format, as in DVD didn't become popular til the very early 2000's but CDs destroyed cassettes in the mid 80's.

It's all about disposable income, time and nostalgia. I used to buy SNES games and gamepads for $100 for a literal crate of them, (shipping used to cost more than the stuff) most of them were boxed, but that was in the late 90's on eBay. Shit, I even used to buy Megadrive games boxed for 10 for £5 at my local game store. The most expensive "vintage" game I ever bought was Virtua Racing and that cost me £6. The 90's after PS1 and Saturn came out was amazing for buying SNES, NES and Megadrive games, because nobody wanted them. Now it is completely different. Same as when PS2 came out, PS1 games were cheaper than a bag of chips, but now they are seen as valuable, because of nostalgia and the fact half of them got binned.

The blue hue LED bulbs are the "Daylight" (~5000K color temperature) bulbs, I buy the ones with "warm" yellow colour temperature (~2700K) and don't have the blue hue problem.

They are not the same though... I know what you mean, I am one of those cunts that has Phillips Hue lights all over my home, and even the warm white ones are not the same as incandescent. The daylight ones that I have in my kitchen still don't feel good to me, and I need bright light there. They seem bluer than Flouro tubes or bulbs at the same colour. The off brand Hue compatible bulbs (The IKEA ones) seem to be warmer, but they are not nearly as bright as incandescents, or the Phillips ones, which defeats the purpose of having lights. I need them bright.

 

[sasazuka]

I stick to the 60W equivalent "warm" 2700K LED bulbs since I have a left eye injury and prefer rooms to be well-lit but not overly bright anyway.