Kluge riddances
Oct. 12th, 2009 08:28 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
come_to_thinkIn the Washington Post Weekly I find two pieces of good news: (1) The market value of CRT TV sets (even in good condition, up to date) has dropped to zero in the U.S.; (2) WalMart is installing LED lighting in its freezer display cases.
The world is full of devices that are scandalously ill adapted to what they do -- complicated ways of doing simple things, absurdly wasteful of energy, requiring agonies of engineering effort to make them barely tolerable. Thermionic tubes we got rid of in my adolescence -- except for CRTs, but now they're going too. Incandescent light bulbs were gotten rid of in sf long ago; now it is beginning to happen in reality. Even fluorescent bulbs, it seems, are threatened.
One has to be patient. Remember magnetic cores for computer memory? In the '60s, every year, something was going to replace them -- but computers continued to be dependent on the nimble fingers of Japanese women. At last, something really did replace them.
Now, maybe if I live long enough (God forbid), reciprocating engines for making wheels go around, and lead-acid batteries.
The world is full of devices that are scandalously ill adapted to what they do -- complicated ways of doing simple things, absurdly wasteful of energy, requiring agonies of engineering effort to make them barely tolerable. Thermionic tubes we got rid of in my adolescence -- except for CRTs, but now they're going too. Incandescent light bulbs were gotten rid of in sf long ago; now it is beginning to happen in reality. Even fluorescent bulbs, it seems, are threatened.
One has to be patient. Remember magnetic cores for computer memory? In the '60s, every year, something was going to replace them -- but computers continued to be dependent on the nimble fingers of Japanese women. At last, something really did replace them.
Now, maybe if I live long enough (God forbid), reciprocating engines for making wheels go around, and lead-acid batteries.
