Obsolete Technology

Last week in lab we talked about obsolete technology, it was really an eye opener. To be honest I haven’t really thought about old technology that much, such as floppy disk, cd players, PlayStations or even social media such as MySpace and yahoo. It’s crazy to think about all of these technologies, once they were very important in our society and now they don’t even exist. I was scrolling online and came across this video. (http://www.cnet.com/videos/top-5-soon-to-be-obsolete-technologies/). This video shows the next top 5 soon to be obsolete technologies today that will soon be in the museums of tomorrow. I was pretty shocked; one of the technologies mentioned in this video was the home printer. I don’t know about you but I use my printer a lot at school and to see this go obsolete will be crazy. However, technology is vastly growing and I can realistic see the home printer being obsolete in the next 10/15 years, by then who knows if we will even need to print anything out on paper.

What happens to all of these old, obsolete technologies that we don’t use anymore? Do we recycle them? No, do we burn them down into smaller pieces and then reuse them? No, it gets trucked into our landfills or we ship it to other countries where it gets piled up on the ground in poor communities. People are literally living right along side this waste.  E-waste is a popular, informal name for electronic products nearing the end of their "useful life." Computers, televisions, VCRs, stereos, copiers, and fax machines are common electronic products. Many of these products can be reused; refurbished, or recycled, however it costs more to recycle them or to break it down into smaller pieces so therefore it just lays in the big gigantic piles shown below.

E-waste is extremely dangerous. E-waste represents 2% of America's trash in landfills, but it equals 70% of overall toxic waste. The extreme amount of lead in electronics alone causes damage in the central and peripheral nervous systems, the blood and the kidneys.

We all need to become more informed about the hazards of e-waste and proper ways to reuse, recycle or dispose of all our unwanted electronic equipment. American’s love technology and can’t seem to resist the newest cell phone, computer or other electronic gadgets, but give little thought to what to do with the “old/outdated” stuff.  The options are to reuse, recycle or “trash” these items and it is important that we take steps to ensure that whatever options we choose, it is done correctly.