Tale of the Tape
My mother has a crate of old LPs that has she has dutifully kept organized and taken with her as she’s moved. Every so often at a family gathering she asks if anyone wants any of the vinyl albums. I admit I have picked out a couple of records I listened to as a kid, purely for sentimental pack rat value. But few, if any of us, have working turntables. (I have one in my garage, waiting for me to have something to hook it up to.) So that crate just sits there.
We’re getting to a similar point here with VHS tapes. Thanks to DVR and DVD, we rarely if ever tape shows for our own use anymore, and we don’t have time to dig out old tapes to watch the handful of stuff we haven’t replaced on disc yet. If it weren’t for the fact that we’re using the VCR to route the cable into our older TV, I think we would have disconnected it. And I don’t want to just fill a landfill with all this plastic, so these things are gonna sit around until I can get ’em recycled. Ah, format obsolescence . . .
About Dave Thomer
Born and raised in Philadelphia. Studied philosophy at Fordham University in the Bronx, where I made many great friends and met my wonderful wife. We moved back to Philadelphia, where I studied philosophy some more and became a teacher. Online and off, I'm looking for ways that we can be better citizens and build stronger communities.