My husband is so in love with electronics that I think in another life he would curate a cellphone museum in an eight track recording studio. He refuses to give up the Nokias, Treos, Palm Pilots, IBM laptops, Minox rangefinder cameras, Oregon weather stations, and Panasonic tapedecks. Notice the plural 's' in each of those items. It is an unrequited love, the relics of which take up space in every room of our home. He refuses to send them in to buy back sites or give them to charity, not that any would take them. Who will buy them?
Is he so sentimental that these remind him of the other 1990's souvenir habit of recording the voice of a new love on the answering machine so you could play it back for your friends and family? Who uses answering machines today?
For my birthday one year he gave me a Mac Book and I broke down in tears thinking it was the most unromantic gift anyone could give! Having been spoiled for so many years before with free computers while university teaching it seemed like a non-gift.
When he forgot to turn off the ringer on his phone at night, I would be incensed. Was there no limit to this invasion of privacy? I thought he would come home with a chip imbedded in his left hand and talk to it!
Then I got a good night's sleep.
My learning curve upended.
I saw the light and it wasn't waking me up in the middle of the night.
With the MacBook I was booking! Faster than ever before I was booking trips here and there, courses at Yale, visits to friends on four continents. I was learning! Life was changing.
I realized that I looked to the past while my husband looked to the future and together we could find a present. When my 19th century romanticism met with his 20th century futurism in the "Steve Jobs" revolutionary period, we entered a time machine that took us everywhere, not without hitches. It moved us quite alot faster than ever before. Lightness and speed were taking us through time.
The Museum of Technology Relics will not be opening soon for lack of a curator. We'll let the boombox be our bridge and continue biting the Apple.
Note: If you have any answers to the burning questions about what to do with outdated technology please comment in the small space below.
