Expedited obsolescence

[pseydtonne]

I've moved to Lexington. I have a bunch of stories to tell, but I have to start with this morning's discovery: the bedside alarm clock is obsolete and does not care.

I prefer having a dan loud alarm clock. I put it on the other side of the room so that I have to get out of bed to answer it. In turn I have a very loud alarm clock with a separate battery for the speaker.

About a year ago my previous alarm clock's buttons stopped working. I could hit snooze but setting the alarm time was an exercise in finger breaking. So I went to the same store but could not find an identical one but I did find a close enough replacement.

This replacement clock was fine for a good while. Recently I would flick it into "Wake Honky Up" position and it would only turn on half of its alarm display (the part that sticks around after you hit snooze). Then it would not go off in the morning. I could wiggle the switch and make the alarm symbol go on but it would not always stay. Solid-state electronics should not be so flaky.

Last night I set the alarm and set my cell phone to go off a couple minutes later as a safety. Not only did the cell phone wake me but it did it just right. The alarm clock which had all signals up when I turned the lights off had only the snooze signal on screen.

In case I got too geek about it: my alarm clock is no longer capable of doing the one thing I bought it to do. Meanwhile, my cell phone's Excess Feature #26 has replaced a vital device of modern culture.

Perhaps it's been too long since I read McLuhan but I thought each technology made obsolete would in turn become an artisan's obsession or at least transform to serve an unexpected niche because it's now a playground. Instead I found an invention that embraces its obsolescence by running toward it.

-perhaps it's suicidal and wants to dive off the bureau, Dante

Comments

[moominmolly.livejournal.com]

We had a similar experience with our alarm clock, recently. I think my cell phone handily woke us up for a few weeks in a row. (I've since replaced it with an alarm clock that starts out with a reeeeally soft "boop boop boop" which gradually ramps up into something that could wake the dead. I really dig the graduated volume -- it seems less jarring, to me.)

Anyway, yeah. Wacky, innit?

[galaneia.livejournal.com]

I second the graduated sound thing. If I have a single, loud alarm it does wake me up, but I generally feel really unsettled, grumpy and not happy about it.

My radio happens to have two alarms, and it will fade up the volume when they go off. I set the first to a classical music station at a low-medium volume; the second goes off 10 mins after the first, is slightly louder, and is set to an oldies station. 5 mins after that my watch alarm goes off, usually fairly near my ear since it's on the nightstand. It's obnoxious and loud, but by then I'm already sort of awake, so I don't have the adrenaline/jarring awake reaction and I don't spend a chunk of my morning trying to get out of a bad mood.

[michigansundog.livejournal.com]

Perhaps it's been too long since I read McLuhan but I thought each technology made obsolete would in turn become an artisan's obsession or at least transform to serve an unexpected niche because it's now a playground.

I hadn't read this theory but the theory itself seems obsolete. Who can generalize about every artist anyhow? Some of the ones I know are obsessive over new technologies and the fecund (play)ground of the divine.

[fuzzplugjones.livejournal.com]

I think what Dante means here is that he's going to take his old alarm clock and try to install some wildly-unstable hobbyist distro of Linux on his old alarm clock and see what it can do :-).

/I'd telnet into my bathroom sink if I could