There is quite a bit of outdated technology that is still heavily used today. Some of it works quite well, but there is a large number of technologies that really should have been retired a long time ago.
Here’s a few of my favorite instances of outdated technology still in use:
- AOL. AOL earned $165 million on dial up revenues in Q1 2013 alone.
- Flash. Frustratingly ancient and poorly coded.
- Floppy disks. Still heavily used by the US government.
- Telegraph. India finally stopped using the telegraph this month… they were spending $20 million to maintain a system that brought in $200k in revenues.
- Textbooks. Incredibly expensive to print the new version of a textbook every year when an electronic version would be far cheaper, far better for the environment and easier to search and find topics.
- Fax machines. Even my company Coalition Technologies still has to heavily use this for our clients.
- TI calculators. Technology has massively advanced over the last 15 years, but Texas instruments still churns out the exact same model of calculator and charges the same price for it.
- Phone books. Huge waste of paper.
- Traffic lights. Super slow and cause waiting at empty intersections.
- Pennies. It costs 1.7 pennies to make one penny. Stupid currency.
Fax machines haha, everytime someone is like “can you fax it to me?” I’m like “oh god really?”
Great list. The textbook biz is in for some serious disruption.