What obsolete technology do you hope makes a comeback

None, really.

Most obsolete technologies are obsolete for a reason, and while they’re fun for nostalgic enthusiasts to muck about with, I doubt they’d be held in the same high regard even by those guys were they to become ‘current’ again.

For instance, I’m a big fan of retro games consoles and old computers. I own and often play around with most of the ‘big’ games consoles of yesteryear, ranging from Dragon 32s and Sega Master Systems to Sega Dreamcasts and N64s. I’ve also one of these DOS-equipped beasts lying around somewhere:

Panasonic Senior Partner, known around these parts as the “lapcrusher”. Mine’s a rebadged Nixdorf version that my dad gave me years ago. CRT green screen, built-in thermal printer, full-sized detachable keyboard, no internal battery, weighs more than I do, yet somehow designed to be ‘portable’. It’s fun to dick around with, but I’m currently writing this on a Windows 10 laptop, so make of that what you will.

Picture not my own, because I can’t be arsed to climb into the loft just to take a photo.

Bollocks to the idea of that thing making a comeback, though. Dual floppy drives were amazing back in the day, but nowadays a floppy disk wouldn’t even be able to store a single photograph. The thing was cumbersome, had less computing power than my smartphone’s bell-end, the screen resolution was precisely three (three what, I’m not sure), it couldn’t do even half of the things that my piece of shit laptop does now, and it weighs more than Titan.

Yeah, the ‘moon of Saturn’ Titan. I compared them.

I love dicking around with it from time to time (in a way, I suppose it was my very first computer too, so nostalgia), but using it day-to-day? Fuck that bullshit.

As another example, I’ve been undertaking a personal writing project on-and-off for the last 12 months or so, and to start with I was using a pen and paper to make notes and shit. Guess what? It was slow, I could barely read my own handwriting, and it hurt my fingers. I’ve got the notepad I was using right in front of me, and I can barely read half of what I wrote. I can type much faster than I can handwrite, and my typing doesn’t degenerate into illegible scribble after prolonged periods of time, so thanks a lot, Windows Notepad.

Same goes for most obsolete technologies that I can think of. We stopped using them largely because we invented something better.

Audio cassettes? Fuck ’em - my phone holds thousands of times more music than a cassette, they don’t sound like regurgitated dog farts, and it’s about the same physical size to boot. I know some people love vinyl, but for me, the same is true of records - outside of hobbyists and DJs they’re dead, and rightfully so. And even those vinyl fans will possess some MP3s somewhere, I fucking guarantee it.

Horses? Not really a technology, per se, but in a contest between a horse and my car, I know which one I’d want to use to go to work in the morning, and it’s not the one that leaves a trail of shit behind it.

Letters? Emails are better. I’ll not hear of the ‘impersonal’ nonsense - an email is only as impersonal as you deign to make it.

Cheques? LOL. It was my nephew’s birthday recently and his great-uncle (my uncle) sent him a cheque for £20. Not only did he not know what the fuck it actually was, but once we explained that it was basically shit money that you can’t use for anything until you physically go to the bank and convert it into actual money, a process that still somehow takes upwards of five days for somebizarre reason, he was visibly annoyed.

Steam trains? Romantic and quaint, but inefficient and dirty. Nobody realistically wants all modern trains to be replaced by Thomas the Tank Engine lookalikes. Let’s move forwards with clean energy-powered MAGLEV TRAINS FROM THE FUTURE OMG.

Medical technology of any kind? Good luck with that.

Seriously, I can't think of a single bit of obsolete technology that would be fun if it somehow made a comeback and usurped its modern replacement. They usually got replaced for a very good reason. They’re best left in the past, or in the hands of enthusiasts.

They’re only fun and nostalgic when you’re not forced to rely on them for anything.