weirdly antiquated technological dead ends that are still a part of modern life

[Freejooky]

Strange way to phrase it, but it gets the point across - what are some things that we use in modern times that seem to have hit a technological-evolutionary dead end a long time ago?

my votes:

Matresses. We sleep on metal springs. Something about it seems so comically barbaric and primitve, like sleeping on a sack stuffed with straw.

Helicopters: Didn't Da Vinci invent these things centuries ago? It seems like a missing link between the kite and the boeing 747, a historical anecdote that should have disappeared long ago. And they still don't work - just look at how many casualities in Iraq have been the result of helicopters suddenly "not working" and going "blam!"

The internal combustion engine. We're burning (strike 1) substances that come from deep earth rot (strike 2) to move around, and (strike 3) belch out disgusting, toxic fumes? It seems like something should have evolved here since the model T.

Ok, post away.

[Ukulele Ike]

Zeppelins and Bathyspheres, man. I couldn't make it through my day without Zeppelins and Bathyspheres.

Moving to IMHO, as I can see no earthly reason that this is in Cafe Society.

-- Uke, CS Mod

[Nametag]

Strange way to phrase it, but it gets the point across - what are some things that we use in modern times that seem to have hit a technological-evolutionary dead end a long time ago?

Jewelry. Culturally, it's so primitive that I'm surprised that women don't grunt their thanks before being dragged off by the hair.

Matresses. We sleep on metal springs. Something about it seems so comically barbaric and primitve, like sleeping on a sack stuffed with straw.

What else would you have springs made of? A bed should be springy, and metal is the only springy thing out there. Nonetheless, better designs and improved materials (except for the springs) are introduced fairly often.

Helicopters: Didn't Da Vinci invent these things centuries ago?

No.

It seems like a missing link between the kite and the boeing 747, a historical anecdote that should have disappeared long ago. And they still don't work - just look at how many casualities in Iraq have been the result of helicopters suddenly "not working" and going "blam!"

They work just fine. Like all aircraft, helicopters need regular maintenance and a reasonable working environment. Unlike other aircraft, they're not getting it.

The internal combustion engine. We're burning (strike 1) substances that come from deep earth rot (strike 2) to move around, and (strike 3) belch out disgusting, toxic fumes? It seems like something should have evolved here since the model T.

Sheesh. 100,000 years of human evolution and 10,000 years of human culture before we arrive at this pinnacle of mobility, and you wanna throw away the gasoline engine after 100 years. There's no pleasing some people.

[ParentalAdvisory]

We're going places.

[Voyager]

Microsoft Windows

[Freejooky]

Originally Posted by Nametag

Sheesh. 100,000 years of human evolution and 10,000 years of human culture before we arrive at this pinnacle of mobility, and you wanna throw away the gasoline engine after 100 years. There's no pleasing some people.

Well, it just seems that if cars/ personal transport had followed the bell curve of everything else, the engines would be the size of a walkman, run on electricity, emit clean water, and last 50 years by now.

Good one on jewelry, though - it really is one step removed from face paint (makeup?).

[El_Kabong]

Men's ties. Just what are those things supposed to represent, anyway?

[ianzin]

Originally Posted by El_Kabong

Men's ties. Just what are those things supposed to represent, anyway?

Ties are technology?

Re the OP, one of the most conspicuous examples is a symphony orchestra, most aspects of which are redundant given modern music-making technology. You don't need 8 first violins and 8 second violins and 8 third violins to try and achieve the required balanced sound. Just take one violin for each part that needs to be played, feed it through one gizmo to double- or triple- track it, or thicken it up as many times as you need, and then use a mixer to give prominence where you want it. Or just use a string synthesiser. Similarly, it's very primitive to use little wooden boxes (violins) for high notes and large wooden boxes ( double bass) for low notes and have all the sizes in-between. With a pitch-shifter you can have a violinist play a double-bass part quite easily. Or, again, just use a decent synth and a player who can mimic the way a solo or ensemble string sound usually sounds.

Of course all the purists say 'it doesn't sound the same'. Well, it sounds close, and in some ways it sounds better, and you don't need 60-odd people lugging all these old-fashioned instruments based on technology from two centuries ago just to play a piece of classical music live. You would only need as many players as there are orchestral parts.

Central-heating is fairly primitive. The romans had basically the same technology as do - heat up water and let it flow around the place through pipes. Shouldn't we be heating our homes using hi-tech inivisible waves or something by now? Like a domestic and peaceful application of 1920s style death rays?

[Neidhart]

Shoelaces.

The traditional lecturer/blackboard form of teaching.

Books.

[Rufus Xavier]

Buttons. How many more freakin' centuries are we going to use these antiquated pains in the - ?

Eyeglasses. These were wearing out their welcome when Ben Franklin was ambassador to France.

Wind-up watches. Puh-lease.

[GorillaMan]

Originally Posted by ianzin

Re the OP, one of the most conspicuous examples is a symphony orchestra, most aspects of which are redundant given modern music-making technology. You don't need 8 first violins and 8 second violins and 8 third violins to try and achieve the required balanced sound. Just take one violin for each part that needs to be played, feed it through one gizmo to double- or triple- track it, or thicken it up as many times as you need, and then use a mixer to give prominence where you want it. Or just use a string synthesiser. Similarly, it's very primitive to use little wooden boxes (violins) for high notes and large wooden boxes ( double bass) for low notes and have all the sizes in-between. With a pitch-shifter you can have a violinist play a double-bass part quite easily. Or, again, just use a decent synth and a player who can mimic the way a solo or ensemble string sound usually sounds.

Of course all the purists say 'it doesn't sound the same'. Well, it sounds close, and in some ways it sounds better, and you don't need 60-odd people lugging all these old-fashioned instruments based on technology from two centuries ago just to play a piece of classical music live. You would only need as many players as there are orchestral parts.

Thoroughly misguided. The technology you describe doesn't exist, and in any case it would miss one crucial aspect - sixty musical minds all working together creatively. Why else does every orchestra sound unique?


BUT...to add to the list, qwerty keyboards. Front door keys. Toilet paper.

[Contrabass]

Originally Posted by ianzin

Ties are technology?

Originally, they were. Their existence is a relic from before good clothes fasteners were commonly available, like buttons, hooks and zippers. Want to keep the cold out of the neck of your shirt in the winter? Tie the opening up with... a tie.

Now, they exist soley for father's day gifts.

Originally Posted by ianzin

Re the OP, one of the most conspicuous examples is a symphony orchestra, most aspects of which are redundant given modern music-making technology. You don't need 8 first violins and 8 second violins and 8 third violins to try and achieve the required balanced sound. Just take one violin for each part that needs to be played, feed it through one gizmo to double- or triple- track it, or thicken it up as many times as you need, and then use a mixer to give prominence where you want it. Or just use a string synthesiser. Similarly, it's very primitive to use little wooden boxes (violins) for high notes and large wooden boxes ( double bass) for low notes and have all the sizes in-between. With a pitch-shifter you can have a violinist play a double-bass part quite easily. Or, again, just use a decent synth and a player who can mimic the way a solo or ensemble string sound usually sounds.

Of course all the purists say 'it doesn't sound the same'. Well, it sounds close, and in some ways it sounds better, and you don't need 60-odd people lugging all these old-fashioned instruments based on technology from two centuries ago just to play a piece of classical music live. You would only need as many players as there are orchestral parts.

Please please please please, tell me that you were kidding about that one.

(Not to say that there isn't good electronic music out there...)

I'll only focus on one part, related to my user name... Anyone who'se ever heard both a violin and a double bass would have to agree that no amount of pitch bending by one toward the other would ever, ever make one sound remotely like the other...

Originally Posted by ianzin

Central-heating is fairly primitive. The romans had basically the same technology as do - heat up water and let it flow around the place through pipes. Shouldn't we be heating our homes using hi-tech inivisible waves or something by now? Like a domestic and peaceful application of 1920s style death rays?

My condo has a 20th century heating/cooling device, an electric heat pump. Let's just say that when it starts getting well below freezing outside, I wish I had an old fashioned hot water or steam system.

Though the 1920s death ray system is intriguing.

[emekthian]

Guns.

The basic technology of using gunpowder to shoot a metal object out of a metal tube is 600 years old or so. We should be using death rays and psy lasers by now!

[Exgineer]

Originally Posted by Freejooky

The internal combustion engine. We're burning (strike 1) substances that come from deep earth rot (strike 2) to move around, and (strike 3) belch out disgusting, toxic fumes? It seems like something should have evolved here since the model T.

Speaking as a mechanical engineer, I have to suggest that you are a bit off base with this one.

First of all, you simply can't equate modern automobiles with a Model T. For over a hundred years there have been steady, and sometimes radical, improvements in the technology. We can do things now that we didn't dream about even fifteen years ago. It's far from an antiquated technology.

An internal combustion engine gives you an almost unmatchable power-to-weight ratio, excellent durability, easy maintenance, and a very long service life. Practically speaking, the thermal efficiency is pretty good too. They're also unbelievably scalable; you can power a supertanker or a chainsaw with different models*. Alternative fuels are available, and your emissions concerns are a bit overstated. There isn't going to be a truly viable alternative for the forseeable future.

Gas-electric hybrids, you say? Maybe, but I know I go through batteries a lot more often than I go through engines. Crappy service life on batteries. I forsee disposal problems.


*Yes, I know there are significant differences between four-stroke compression-ignition marine diesels and two-stroke spark-ignition chainsaw motors. They're both internal combustion engines.

[drewbert]

Telephone poles. We still have to plant big logs vertically in the ground, evenly spaced, sometimes supported by metal guy wires. Then we string long cables from the top one pole to the next, just to get power and data from one place to another. How primitive and ugly!

[masonite]

Fax machines! I hate fax machines, they should all be smashed. Think about it -- they digitize an image, send the bits down the pipe, another machine on the far end reassembles the bits into the original image, then throws the data away. WTF?

Add to that hopeless scenario all the people who insist on printing out word processing documents, then faxing them somewhere to be re-keyed. (Assume both parties have email, but don't know what email can do.)

[bughunter]

Eating utensils: Knives, forks and spoons. Chopsticks. Straws.

The newest of these is the fork, no? And that was adopted as tableware in the 18th century.

Sure, the spork was invented in the 70's, but it never took off.

[Ranchoth]

Toilet paper.

Not that I'd want to go without it, but...I mean, you'd think that we'd have come up with something a little more advanced (and yet in common use) by the 21st century.

[Exgineer]

Dang. I can see I'm going to be busy with this thread.

Originally Posted by emekthian

Guns.

The basic technology of using gunpowder to shoot a metal object out of a metal tube is 600 years old or so. We should be using death rays and psy lasers by now!

Back when I was teaching elementary dynamics (don't ask, that job sucked) I used to use guns as an example of a truly elegant technology. Sometimes posessing as few as three moving parts, they still operate with wonderful reliability and consistency. I don't see them going obsolete any time soon either, because they are still a great way to deliver a lot of energy quickly. Besides, get into the wayback machine, go back 600 years to find a mope with a cannon-lock handgonne he's loading with meal powder he just mixed himself, hand him an M1A1, and ask him if he thinks it's the same thing.

Originally Posted by drewbert

Telephone poles. We still have to plant big logs vertically in the ground, evenly spaced, sometimes supported by metal guy wires. Then we string long cables from the top one pole to the next, just to get power and data from one place to another. How primitive and ugly!

The alternative is underground conduit. That's an attractive alternative if you can negotiate a special franchise for the right-of-way and dig, but heavy rains can still give you headaches. Poles give you good separation from ground, and we have a lot fewer of them these days than we used to anyway. Take a look at a photograph of midtown Manhattan circa 1925 sometime.

Originally Posted by masonite

Fax machines!

I can add nothing to this but whole-hearted agreement.

[Lumpy]

So many nitpicks, so little time...

First Category: things that no one has (yet) come up with a really good replacement for--
-internal combustion engines
-chemically powered guns
-eating utensils (what could replace these?)
-toilet paper (ditto)
-books (yeh, as far as pure data storage goes, they suck; but still the best format)

Second Category: things that ARE being replaced by better alternatives--
-spring matresses
-shoe laces
-buttons
-traditional "blackboard and lecturer" teaching
-eyeglasses
-front door keys (at least for public access. They're still a cheap reasonably secure method of ensuring that only a few people can go through a door)

Third Category: things that people don't WANT to replace--
-string orchestras
-jewelry
-neckties
-windup watches (if you just need a cheap accurate timepiece, get digital. But an expensive windup is still a work of art)

Fourth Category: things that aren't really that old--
-helicopters (Da Vinci's design has virtually nothing to do with modern helicopters)

Fifth Category: things that truly are pointless holdovers--
-Qwerty keyboard
-Fax machines

[NinjaChick]

Beepers/Pagers, and, to a lesser extent, PDAs such as the PalmPilot. I've got a Palm, but have basically replaced it with my cell phone.

[5 time champ]

Originally Posted by Lumpy

So many nitpicks, so little time...


Fifth Category: things that truly are pointless holdovers--
-Qwerty keyboard
-Fax machines

Umm- you forgot MS Windows

[Exgineer]

Actually, mechanical wristwatches are still necessary in some cases. Strong Em fields or ionizing radiation will turn your $400 watch into so much inert jewelry in no time (of course in the latter case you have bigger problems than buying a new watch).

I like watches the same way I like guns. Purely mechanical, no computers involved, and they work.

[Exgineer]

That should have been "EM." I let go of the shift key too soon.

[Albert Rose]

I use my tie to wipe my glasses clean.

[Albert Rose]

And to impress the ladies.

[Cowgirl Jules]

Sewers.

Not that I have an alternative, but I just had a pleasant evening of SDMB browsing interrupted by an ominous burbling from my toilet. Which developed into a full-scale spontaneous overflow. And it just happens to be the evening after they did some mysterious maintenance on my sewer main line today.

Must cut that line of reasoning off before it becomes a pit thread, but surely there exists the possibility of a technology a little better than that based on the "s*** runs downhill" theory.

[Revtim]

Originally Posted by masonite

Fax machines! I hate fax machines, they should all be smashed. Think about it -- they digitize an image, send the bits down the pipe, another machine on the far end reassembles the bits into the original image, then throws the data away. WTF?

Add to that hopeless scenario all the people who insist on printing out word processing documents, then faxing them somewhere to be re-keyed. (Assume both parties have email, but don't know what email can do.)

FAXes were the first thing I thought of when I saw this thread. Email should have sent faxes into the garbage bin by now, except it's still not easier to sign and send documents via email.

What happened to that "digital signing" law that I believe Clinton signed? I hoped that was the death knell of faxes, but I still really have clue what it really was....

[panache45]

Originally Posted by ianzin

8 third violins

No, those guys have all moved to the viola section.

[Binarydrone]

Originally Posted by Ranchoth

Toilet paper.

Not that I'd want to go without it, but...I mean, you'd think that we'd have come up with something a little more advanced (and yet in common use) by the 21st century.

Heh, he doesn't know how to use the three seashells.

[mike1dog]

Incandescent lightbulbs: Why can't these last more than three months? I know flourescent bulbs are available, but most of my fixtures have very visible bulbs, and flourescent bulbs don't really look good.

[Miller]

Originally Posted by Freejooky

Well, it just seems that if cars/ personal transport had followed the bell curve of everything else, the engines would be the size of a walkman, run on electricity, emit clean water, and last 50 years by now.

Actually, if they followed the curve of electronics, they'd be the size of a walkman, run on electricity, emit clean water, and have to be upgraded every six months.

[Napier]

Most of what's in my pockets - money, keys, credit and debit cards, license, checkbook - these things are all just forms of ID. And fallible ones at that. Why don't fingerprint or retina or iris readers replace every damn one of these stupid old things?

[ralph124c]

Why we keep these anachronisms going is beyond me..we elect corrupt, stupid, venal and unpricipled politicians to run (and in most cases, screw up ) our lives.
Why can't we have a "Council of Scientists" (all must be at least MIT Ph.Ds).
These guys could really make things happen!
What I envision: all decsions of government to be made by the council. Government has NO SAY in anybodie's personal life!
Think ofit!
We in Boston, are about to be "graced" by the Democratic National Convention..$100 millions dollars and 4 days for the corrupt party hacks to party..man, give me the "COUNCIL OF SCIENTISTS" any day!

[Annie-Xmas]

The electronic grid system of bringing electricity to people. Anyone remember last August? Or last night in Englewood, New Jersey? We need automatic shut downs when things go wrong.

And the issue of "airplane security" is still in the dark ages also three years after 9/11.

[Laughing Lagomorph]

Originally Posted by ralph124c

...Why can't we have a "Council of Scientists" (all must be at least MIT Ph.Ds).
These guys could really make things happen!
...

Have you ever MET an MIT Ph.D? Your idea is one of the scariest ones I've ever read on these boards. Yikes.

[Fenris]

Originally Posted by ralph124c

Why we keep these anachronisms going is beyond me..we elect corrupt, stupid, venal and unpricipled politicians to run (and in most cases, screw up ) our lives.
Why can't we have a "Council of Scientists" (all must be at least MIT Ph.Ds).
These guys could really make things happen!
What I envision: all decsions of government to be made by the council. Government has NO SAY in anybodie's personal life!
Think ofit!
We in Boston, are about to be "graced" by the Democratic National Convention..$100 millions dollars and 4 days for the corrupt party hacks to party..man, give me the "COUNCIL OF SCIENTISTS" any day!

Are you nuts?!

You want a Science Council?

Don't you know what happens when you get a Science Council?

The core of your planet becomes unstable and when someone tries to warn them, they'll scoff at him.

Then, he'll start to build a rocket to save him and his family so that the race can continue elsewhere but the Science Council will think this is a ploy to undermine them and have their goons destroy it leaving only a small working model that he'll use to rocket his son away from the dying planet!

Do you want to destroy the world?

Fenris

[ianzin]

No, GorillaMan, I am not 'thoroughly misguided' and the technology I describe not only exists - I have actually used it and so have countless others. No, Contrabass, I am not joking.

My post involved two basic contentions.

(1) If a piece of music requires, say, 20 different parts, then these days one only needs 20 different musicians to perform it. In the past, the only way to double the sound of two violins was to have two violinists. This increases (or can increase) the respective loudness / presence of that particular part and also alters the timbre, given that two violins playing the same notes sound different than one. These days, you can amplify the relative volume (of one part to another) with infinite degrees of control and subtlelty. You can also take one input and double-, triple-, or multi-track it all you want, including very subtle additions of phase delay and timbre adjustment to create pretty well any sound you can imagine. In this way, one violinist can produce a very rich array of diverse sounds and textures, sounding like a solo violin, an 8-strong string section, or a set of pan pipes fused with whale song (not that there's much call...).

I have never contended that this approach to the rendition of a symphony would sound the same as a classical symphony orchestra, which is entirely irrelevant to my point. The point is that this is a perfectly feasible way of performing the piece of music. Whether it sounds better or worse is entirely a matter of subjective judgement.

2. Whereas in times gone by the only way to get a stringed instrument to producer higher or lower notes was to adjust the size of the wooden box it is stretched over, this is no longer the case. Again, this is not only true and non-contentious, it has been demonstrated in practice any number of times. I can play the violin, and I've played in orchestras. I've had great fun experimenting with sampling devices, octave boxes (devices which transpose the input up or down one or more octaves) and pitch shifters. There is absolutely no problem with playing a double bass part on a violin if you know how. And of course there's no need to rely on catgut and wires stretched over a wooden box. A synthesiser is much neater and more portable, and more versatile.

[Ms Boods]

Originally Posted by Neidhart

Books.

Crikey, no we have to keep books! Sure they take up space and are bulky, but you want something something that doesn't become unreadable the moment it's scratched or introduced to a magnet; or that its reader-media doesn't become obsolete -- I am going to have to retype my dissertation for publication on this comp, because it was written originally on a comp that had no hard drive and used 2 floppies (one chapter per floppy). Bleah!

Books have heft to them: around 1990 I was in a palaeography workshop at the British Library, and one of the lectures was a senior curator came along to talk about the preservation and preventative care for the rarer manuscripts held in the collection. (This lady is well known for cuddling new mss to the Library like wee kitties, and gives them all nicknames, and will go around all day cuddling a new mss and introducing it to people. I myself do not find this at all odd, actually.)

Anyway, in the middle of her discussion, one of the students (all adults, not children) piped up and said, why didn't they just photocopy all the manuscripts and books like Beowulf, and make those accessible, and just store the originals if they were so precious. Crikey, did those two get into it. This genteel, eccentric older British lady, and a very down to earth Australian lady...at the end, the library lady walloped the Australia lady on the backside with her book (no, not Beowulf) -- a CDR upside the head doesn't have the same effect. And there's nothing like dropping a stack of books on the desk next to the undergraduate who is sleeping during your lecture.

[GorillaMan]

Originally Posted by ianzin

No, GorillaMan, I am not 'thoroughly misguided' and the technology I describe not only exists - I have actually used it and so have countless others. No, Contrabass, I am not joking.

What, it plays Mahler, Bartok, Bach, etc, all indistinguishable in a concert hall from a real orchestra? I doubt it.

In this way, one violinist can produce a very rich array of diverse sounds and textures, sounding like a solo violin, an 8-strong string section, ...

A decent knowledge of string instrument sound production would tell you there's far more to timbre than doubling the sounds, even with a few modifications.

I

have never contended that this approach to the rendition of a symphony would sound the same as a classical symphony orchestra, which is entirely irrelevant to my point. The point is that this is a perfectly feasible way of performing the piece of music.

So's a piano reduction. Neither is accurate to the composer's intentions, and neither can achieve the variety of effects an orchestra can.

There is absolutely no problem with playing a double bass part on a violin if you know how.

You play open fourths...umm..how?

[Johnny L.A.]

Helicopters: Didn't Da Vinci invent these things centuries ago? It seems like a missing link between the kite and the boeing 747, a historical anecdote that should have disappeared long ago. And they still don't work - just look at how many casualities in Iraq have been the result of helicopters suddenly "not working" and going "blam!"

The safest single-engine aircraft in the U.S. is the Bell JetRanger -- a helicopter. Leonardo had some ideas about an airscrew, but it wasn't until early last Century that anyone made a helicopter that worked. And helicopters work very well, thankyouverymuch. I'd like to see a 747 hover over a floundering ship and pluch the crew off in a basket!

Johnn L.A.
Private Pilot, Helicopter

[gonzoron]

Originally Posted by Napier

Most of what's in my pockets - money, keys, credit and debit cards, license, checkbook - these things are all just forms of ID. And fallible ones at that. Why don't fingerprint or retina or iris readers replace every damn one of these stupid old things?

Well I don't know about you, but I'd rather a mugger take my wallet than my thumb or eye.

But fax machines are pointless.

[Chefguy]

Dental tools!

After my last teeth-cleaning ordeal, I went to my doctor for leech application, some bleeding, and a consult for trepaning.

Man, how medieval an experience is that!?

[Voyager]

Originally Posted by Cowgirl Jules

Sewers.

Not that I have an alternative, but I just had a pleasant evening of SDMB browsing interrupted by an ominous burbling from my toilet. Which developed into a full-scale spontaneous overflow. And it just happens to be the evening after they did some mysterious maintenance on my sewer main line today.

Ever have a septic tank to deal with. I lived in a house with one probably 100 years old. When they put sewers in it was a cause to rejoice. In this house we had problems, but once we learned how to rent the reamer, and where the access is, we've had no problems.

Of course a little black hole at the end of the line would be real nice...

[CanvasShoes]

Originally Posted by GorillaMan

.............. Toilet paper.

Toilet paper? And what would you propose we do instead??

[Gatopescado]

Originally Posted by Nametag

Jewelry. Culturally, it's so primitive that I'm surprised that women don't grunt their thanks before being dragged off by the hair.

I feel so strongly about this that I didn't bother reading anything past this post. Finally, someone who understands me! And as a "rider", I submit tattoos.

I consider myself so far from the trees that bobbles and trinkets and ink on my body are an unthinkable option (but, to my shame or credit, depending on who you ask, I do wear a wedding ring, and NOTHING ELSE! And I don't like it. ).

I'll also add any electricity not generated by atomic power. Its safe folks! Look at the French!(and all those other countrys that use it.....except the Ex-USSR. They did it wrong.)

However, this question brings up an important idea. Mainly, there are some things that simply don't warrent any further investment in technology. I'm sure there are more efficient ways to keep bread fresh, but the simple plastic clip or "wire in paper" tie work perfectly fine.

Sometimes low tech is perfectly fine. Hell, HD has made millions off it!

[jackelope]

I'm not going to call housing a dead-end technology, but isn't it about time for some kind of major breakthrough in home construction? Surely, a modest home doesn't have to cost two or three years' salary and take the full-time efforts of twenty people for three months to build?

There were those dome-homes that got some publicity in the 80s, but I haven't seen much of them since; surely there are options that are reasonably affordable and energy-efficient, but don't resemble Buckminster Fuller's fever-dream?

[Cheesesteak]

Originally Posted by jackelope

Surely, a modest home doesn't have to cost two or three years' salary and take the full-time efforts of twenty people for three months to build?

Well, a 'modest' home doesn't cost all that much. These days, anyone building a <4br <2500sqft home is apparently a fool

[kalex]

I have a prediction - within a few years, no one will carry checkbooks.

I have on line banking and a debit card. I almost never write checks anymore.

But I insist on keeping my jewelry and toilet paper! (I keep them in different places, thank you.)

[GorillaMan]

Originally Posted by CanvasShoes

Toilet paper? And what would you propose we do instead??

Isn't that the point of the thread? Things that we should have replaced by now, except that nobody's come up with a solution?