And so while we let companies put profits over compatibility with older technologies, think of these scenarios:
1. We almost lost all the data collected in the 1960 census.
IBM changed out older tape drives to newer models on all of their computers in 1961. But they didn't tell anyone the new drives would not read the old tapes. That data would be gone forever if they had not found an old-computer collector who had the computer and drives to read the tapes and print them out.
2. In the early 2000s, a company was ordered to bring to court all of their financial records from their previous 15 years. They brought in floppy disks containing all of their data. The court could not read most of it:
- All of the records before 1994 were in Lotus 123 on the MS-DOS operating system. There were no computers available that could read the data. IBM bought out Lotus to make people use their software instead.
- Microsoft Excel could read Lotus 123 files, but for only a few upgrades. Then Microsoft decided it was "too expensive" to maintain backward compatibility. But this company had relied on the early support in Excel and expected it to continue. And new Excel can't read some old Excel files.
- Nothing could be found to read 8-inch and 5.25-inch floppy disks.
- New computers cannot run any version of older Windows (XP and earlier) or MS-DOS.
The company lost the lawsuit because it could not prove the assertions.
3. In 2004, I was working as a lab engineer at IU. One group was trying to do a 25-year study, and they were in the 12th year of the study when the last computer they originally bought (in 1982, before I started working there) for the study (including the spares they bought) failed. There was no way to move the study over to new computers. They could not even read their old data on new equipment. I found a data extraction program, but some of the data were not extracted correctly. The program that controlled the experiment would not run on newer computers, and the control interface PC card would not fit the bus slots in the new computers. The study was ruined. They could not even use the data they had already collected. Progress and profit ruins all.
4. In the 1970s, I read a novel, "The Day the Machines Stopped". It was about a sudden change that caused all electrical devices to stop working. Electricity refused to flow. Only a few devices continued to work: Diesel engines started by a spring or gunpowder starter, firearms, wind-up phonographs, bicycles, gas stoves, and animal propelled vehicles.
Imagine this scenario: Nuclear "scientists" accidentally set off a device that destroys Tehran and everything within a 200-mile radius. It also destroys every semiconductor device in the world. No more electronics other than tube equipment that does not contain semiconductors. Power-line MOV lightning arrestors become short-circuits. No computers. No cars with semiconductors controlling the engine or transmission. All CD, DVD, and BluRay players and all TVs and radios quit working. No working satellites. No LED lightbulbs. And no more semiconductor manufacture (controlled by computers). Back to wind-up phonographs? And no music that was not recorded on records. Most surroundsound is matrix again.
5. Look at all of the mess that a failed Microsoft update caused this week.
Do you really want companies to profit by deprecating old technologies? Think!
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