Times are changing faster than ever, and old technologies that have only just reached their pinnacle are being replaced. The technologies I grew up with are disappearing. I'll list a few of the more major ones.
The LP: I still remember vinyl records, I'm ashamed to say. The CD format is technically far superior and offers stereo, but some music conniseurs believe that CD sound is flat and soulless (that's more do to with the added harmonics of the LP needle than the reproduction of the music itself). But for all intents and purposes, LP is dead.
The audio tape: Crackly, fuzzy, mono, and offering less quality than radio, audio tapes are hardly ever used any more except for recording, and digital is replacing them there too.
The floppy disk: Standard 1.44 Mb but actually capable of around twice that, floppies just don't hold anything near the space we need today. Flash cards, USB sticks and packet-writing CD writer software have made them obsolete. Many PCs now are not sold with a floppy drive at all.
The incandescent bulb: being slowly replaced by fluorescents, LEDs and HID bulbs, all of which are much more efficient and last longer. The incandescent will stay for a while longer because it's so cheap and it still hasn't been matched in high output applications, but it's day is coming fast.
The CRT screen: cathode ray tube technology is under attack by LCD, TFT and plasma screens, all of which offer better compactness, efficiency, and visual quality. The CRT is likewise still around because its cheap. Expect to see it disappear totally within the next 10 years.
The VCR: betamax gets its eventual revenge. Digital is pushing this old analogue magnetic tech out of our lives after less than 15 years of popularity. Many stores have stopped selling VCRs totally and most movies are released only on DVD. We still lack a format to record as easily as VCRs did, but dvd-recorders and hd-recorders are making leaps and bounds.
Analogue broadcasts: Although they'll still be around a long time to come, analogue TV, satellite and radio transmissions are slowly in the way out, actually more for reasons of air bandwidth than the superior quality.
There's some of the technologies I've known in my lifetime that are now gone or swiftly on their way out.
Can anyone think of any more technologies that have been around for ages but that we're likely to see disappear in less than a decade?
