The Superannuated Utilization

superannuated: obsolete through age or new technological or intellectual developments

I've been seeing things lately. No, nothing like giraffes in tuxedos or things of that nature. Perhaps I should reword it: I've been noticing things, noticing trends.

There's been a subculture move toward the organic & the simplistic.

Cars were once for the affluent, not any more. The same was said for computers but we've been guided to be a tech oriented society. Cell phones are also no longer a luxury, smartphones are a way of life.

I've always loved antiques & all things retro. Seeing an old Victrola in someone's attic just pained me, as did old record players in a basement gathering dust, walkie-talkies in a box in the garage, PDA's in the back of a desk drawer, etc… but life moves on as technology advances.

I recently ran across something that both blew my mind & gave me hope, it's called the Hipster PDA.

As you can see, it's simply some 3 x 5 cards held together by an office binder w/ a pen clipped to it. The idea started off as a joke, as a commentary on the tech world we inhabit but to everyone's surprise, it took off! After a while it was adopted by hipsters (just google them) as a way of keeping track of projects & ideas, the cards were removable so they could pin them to white boards & “get things done”!

After that came the Moleskin PDA:

Again, it's basically a black notebook w/ a moleskin cover, colored tabs to indicate the progress of ideas or projects, etc. Another word for it is the bullet journal, there's even a website for it (again, just google "bullet journal").

Slick, huh? Guess what? It's “new”!

In a world of increasing & advancing tech to help our lives be more productive, we have thousands of people who are going retro to actually be more productive.

Now, I've carried around a simple notebook for the past 15 years or so, one small enough to fit in my pocket. I realize that smart phones have voice recorders & you can speak notes & appointments, but there's something about the tangibility of pen & paper that's appealing for some reason.

I still haven't abandoned my HP IPAQ pda though, it works for me. I love both the handwriting recognition feature & the SD card, which travels across all my devices; but to each his own.

As trendy or transient as hipster & moleskin pdas are, it's nice to see that Ecclesiastes 1:9 still rings true, “What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again, there is nothing new under the sun.”