Let me preface this by saying that my generalizations and thoughts are highly regionalized, and stem from Americans and their way of doing things. For the international readers here, let this serve as an insight into my world.
My laptop is old. Not old in the geological sense, but old in the way that it would be in 3rd grade right now, learning long division, and rose-tinted views of our nation's bloody historical encounters. It is heavy, the battery has no charge and will only run when plugged in. I essentially have a portable desktop PC. However, as I strike the well used keys, palms resting on a plastic case where sweaty palms and thousands of hours of typing and have worn away the paint, I consider just what this laptop has gone though, and what it's future might hold.
There is a sentiment that any computer over 2 years old is obsolete, and that it need not be maintained, as the current models are soooo much better. Basically, anything that is no longer good enough to compete with the current generation of a given product has lost all value other than the memories that are made with it. But I don't see it that way.
This laptop arrived on my doorstep running Windows Vista. A year and a half later, It was so slow, I couldn't use it for my schoolwork in a productive manner. Previously, I had had my dad do all the OS installations, but I thought I was old enough that this is something I should learn how to do. A geeky coming of age ritual. So I did some research and tried to make sense of it. It was confusing, and I knew that messing up with an OS install could make your machine almost useless. So I had my friend @alexhj7 walk me through the process in the back room of his work. Upgrading the laptop to Windows XP was no longer a daunting task. This was the beginning of my new approach to servicing the technology in my life.
I have a first-generation iPod Nano (Blue) that still runs and unfortunately serves as a time capsule for the shitty music I listened to in high school. I tinkered with the firmware on it and changed GUI assets because I could. I have a 32GB Microsoft Zune Brown), that still runs because I have tinkered with it long enough, I can now use it as an external memory drive, allowing me to bypass the no-longer supported cantankerous Zune software. And 5 OS reinstalls later, my laptop is still alive and kicking.
Now, that's not to say that there is no need to look towards the future and to embrace new technology. I have a nice smartphone, and yeah, I am looking to get a new laptop in the next few months. But what I am getting at, is that the additional features offered by new tech are more tantalizing to most people than simply learning to maintain your current tech. No, let me rephrase that, learning to maintain tech is not simple. It requires research. It requires time. It requires experimenting. It requires writing shit down. But to invest in that pursuit is to gain a deeper understanding of this force that proliferates our lives in huge ways. To figure out what is wrong with something requires knowing what the larger framework looks like. To fix that problem requires knowing how to manipulate that framework. Regardless, you have to get beneath the surface in order to understand what makes something work.
The knowledge gained in this endeavor is empowering, and allows one to take control of something, rather than being controlled by it. If our culture is to take a look at itself and find areas to improve that will benefit everyone, I can think of no better way to start than to bring the intrinsically intertwined, but oh-so-distant worlds of people and world of tech together in a manner where understanding is mutual, and progress is informed instead of led by the nose. So go and learn how to do something with your computer/phone/tablet today, which you didn't know how to do yesterday. Teach a friend. Stop throwing useful tech away. If you can't salvage it, and if you can't repurpose it, then donate it or recycle it. There is always a use for it somewhere.