Discarding technology
Went to look for a FireWire cable today, had to fight through a huge box of tangled junk. Had too many of everything, all my cable crap from the past 15 years…stuff not being used, but taking up space (and taking up sanity when I go to find something.) I had cables representing technology from 1920 to now.
I ended up throwing out:
11 USB cables
3 FireWire cables
1 S-video cable
2 Coax cable TV cables
3 CAT-5 networking cables
2 telephone cables
7 assorted audio micro- and mini-cables
3 guitar cables
6 RCA audio cables
2 DSL modems
1 Wireless router
1 two-prong ungrounded extension cord
3 new printer cartridges from a printer that died and got replaced by a better printer
2 computer monitor power cables
5 “wall wart” power adapters for gear that died a long time ago
…….and a partridge in a pear tree.
I thought about putting them on Freecycle.org, but I really hate having people come to my house. Also thought about putting it all up on a MySpace bulletin and mailing the box out to someone, but MySpace recently blocked one of my sites and called it “head lice”, so I don’t like going there any more.
The “obsolete/excess technology” idea of having all these cables and boxes I don’t use made me think about one of the only performance art things I’ve ever seen that I loved. It was Attaboy and a friend standing on a couple tons of last year’s computers in 1999 at the San Francisco dump, doing an impassioned spoken word thing about the tentative nature of evolving technology, in front of a crowd of about 60 really happy people. I loved it.
March 17th, 2008 at 10:20 pm
It kinda breaks my heart a little to know you just threw all of that away. But I can understand the urge. I have a filing cabinet filled with cables, adapters and the like. There’s been a few occasions when I would’ve liked to have just tossed all of it. But it’s actually good that I didn’t. My current “studio” is patched every which way, using all manner of cords and plugs. I’d be out a lot of money if I hadn’t been packratting that stuff for so many years.
March 17th, 2008 at 10:53 pm
Put the stuff in a box and drop it in front of any convenience store.
It’ll vanish like a cookie crumb dropped on an anthill.
March 17th, 2008 at 10:56 pm
I’m a middle-class guy in a rich town. If I put it on the street, no one would pick it up, and I’d get arrested for littering.
We tried to give clothes away to the salvation army, realized this town and none nearby have one. Left it in front of the library. Probably got thrown out.
MWD