TubeNet

All this hype about the "not-my-pad" today has me thinking about tubas vs. computers. I remember a few years ago, when you would sometimes see a college student selling a horn to buy a computer. I always felt they were not making the best longterm investment by doing that. Fortunately, that doesn't happen as often now (partially because tubas have become more expensive and computers are cheaper.)
But, here is the thing - in five years, that new computer is not nearly as useful. In ten years, it is close to useless. A 10 year old tuba that has not suffered major abuse is just as playable as when it was brand new. A 20-30 year old tuba is common in the stable of a serious player - how many computer geeks would seriously consider making their livelihood on a 286 processor?

I like your point...


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One thing I find funny about all this new technology is how powerful it is and how accustomed we've become to this instantaneous technology. As and example, a couple years ago in a class I took, all the readings we're on jstor. In 30 mins I pulled up all the files, downloaded them, organized them by class, and re-labeled them. I did this in the comfort of my room. Had I gone to school, It would have taken me 20 minutes just to get there....

Ultimately, lots of computers are used by students just to take notes, check their e-mail, and go on facebook... Functionally speaking, a computer processor of the same speed as a pentium one, would be good enough for most those tasks. (But wouldn't be as cool as a macbook pro or as fast.)

bloke wrote:Which one is more desirable/collectable...a 1967 television or a 1967 Covette Stingray?

Neither. The answer is my 1967 Jaguar E-type that rolled off the assembly line the last month of covered headlights and 3 SU carburettors. But I digress....

I'm in the process of cleaning out an office building that has not been purged of old files and hardware since the firm I work for bought the building in 1984. I even have some old 8-inch floppies from an early Toshiba word processor (which could have been a personal computer if someone had actually thought a tad more about interface).

It's worse than simple obsolescence. For a tuba you can still make or adapt a part to keep it playable. By contrast, without hard copy, the archival data on these discs is not recoverable. This is a serious concern world wide in all contexts.

I have one 5 1/4 inch floppy drive computer left that I had kept for the last ten years to make sure I could still read those discs as necessary. Now, it and the discs will go away to recycling as there is no need to keep them anymore and any documents that need permanent archiving are in hard copy.

And furthermore, one of the gentlemen of the firm who passed some years ago was a Civil War collector. I found an old box of documents, now safely transferred to his son for eventual archiving at a larger collection, of what appear to be some original Civil War era mustering rolls and state militia commissions, as well as some personal papers his family wish to keep. The box was missed when clearing out his estate. I'm just glad I am the one clearing stuff now, as I always look in a box before I pitch it to make sure of just such circumstances.

it seems to me that the faster computers get, the longer a useful life they have. My company just refreshed my laptop with a new one. My current one is over 4 years old, but is still quite decent.

I think the main difference is that the computer is at Point A on the Curve of Technological Evolution and the tuba is at Point B on the curve.