Of Lectors, Daisy Wheels, and the Rhythms of Obsolescence
In the printing and publishing trades, we tend to brood a lot about obsolescence—and with good reason. Veterans have seen technological change sweep away entire segments of the industry during the course of their careers. For newcomers, it’s the reality that today’s job-seeking qualifications probably won’t be tomorrow’s job-retaining skills. No wonder that we put worry about falling behind the learning curve at or near the top of nearly every what-keeps-you-up-at-night survey that we have the heart to respond to.
We can take some comfort, though, in knowing that fear of obsolescence—or at least a certain fascination with it—is shared by just about everybody who works for a living.
It inspired the creation, for example, of “The Jobs of Yesteryear: Obsolete Occupations”, a much-linked-to online feature from National Public Radio. Do you remember elevator operators? Milkmen? Switchboard attendants? You probably do. But do you know what “lectors” used to be paid for? Read “The Jobs of Yesteryear,” and see if you don’t feel just a little bit more secure about the job you have.
That products and services age no better than the occupations that created them seems to be the point of “12 Things That Became Obsolete This Decade,” a review of the newly passé from The Huffington Post. Print takes some predictable hits in this one, with newspaper classifieds, encyclopedias, and catalogs all deemed relics of the recent past.
On the other hand, so are telephone calls (eclipsed by text messaging), landline phones (replaced by mobiles), and, the article insists, wires (although a glance at the electrical rat’s nest behind this writer’s workstation is stark evidence to the contrary). It’s a reminder, in any case, that “obsolete” doesn’t mean “out of use,” just headed in that direction.
Put a number into the title of anything you publish on the Internet, and you’ll eventually be one-upped—or two-upped, three-upped, etc. “21 Things That Became Obsolete This Decade,” from the Business Insider web site, consigns PDAs, VCRs, and fax machines to the museum of antiquity, where—according to Bianca Male, the author of the article—paper holds sway as “probably the biggest casualty” of the period. (Ms. Male does pay passing respect to what she calls paper’s “2,000 year reign,” however.)
We can keep playing 21 with “21 Things That Will Become Obsolete in Education by 2020”, a list directly inspired by the article just quoted. Those with current classroom teaching experience (this writer has some) know that educational theories and techniques are changing faster than ringtones in a high school student’s cell phone. Still, it’s a bit unnerving to be informed that desks, homework, and standardized tests are on their way out of teaching environments, along with “typical cafeteria food” (although most of us would agree that 2020 is too long to make schoolkids wait for that ordeal to go away).
It may be that we’re not so secretly proud of knowing how to do things that we’ll never again be called upon to do. Was “getting TSRs and CD device drivers to load into DOS” one of your prized geek abilities back in the day? You’ll find it under G in this wiki of outmoded personal and professional skills. Editorial contributions are invited, and every one of us probably has something to add.
But, there’s nothing nostalgic or amusing about job obsolescence. For millions of Americans, it’s a real and serious threat. When an article like this one reminds us that the demand for cashiers, file clerks, telemarketers, and computer operators—jobs that used to be abundant and relatively easy to get—is in steep decline, it’s easier to understand why the national unemployment rate remains so distressingly high.
And here’s a similar piece from Forbes: “In Pictures: The Worst Jobs For The 21st Century”. Published about three years ago, it foresees continuing declines in manufacturing jobs, but it also it adds economists, radio announcers, and insurance agents to the list of occupational groups where slow to no growth is expected—proof that job obsolescence cuts across more categories of employment than just the obvious ones.
The printing and publishing trades aren’t exempt. (News analysts, reporters, and correspondents, we’re deeply sorry to say, come first in the Forbes worst-job list). But we have been through cycles of obsolescence and reinvention before, and we will come through the present one with the same determination to adapt, learn, and grow.
It’s true that prehistoric tasks like changing the wheels on daisy wheel printers and resolving IRQ conflicts on mother boards belong in wikis of forgotten routines. But the essential skills of graphic communications will never pass out of usefulness. By evolving, they’ll become even more indispensable.