March 23rd, 2010 by Rachel | Tags: Anthropology, Mass Extinction, Material Culture, Photography | 1 Comment »
BEWARE! DVDs are on the endangered species list among with many other objects including newspapers and magazines that will soon to be gone! DVDs will soon be joining the club of extinct species, which includes cassette tapes and ice machines that were used to store food before the days of refrigerators. The mass extinction of DVDs are causing video stores to close and destroying millions of jobs, as the internet is providing movies by simply clicking the mouse to download.
Objects are no different from animals and humans when it comes to the history of evolution and extinction. Like humans, objects evolve and the physical appearance change overtime. For instance, the very first television sets in 1930’s had reddish-orange images about half the size of a business card!1 Then they were evolved into a box with a 21-inch screen with black-and-white images. Those bulky televisions weighing a massive amount of pounds were eventually evolved into sleek, flat screen televisions with brilliant, colorful images!
While objects do evolve, many can become ‘extinct’ like animals such as Pyrenean Ibex and Caribbean Monk Seal. When certain objects and animals become extinct, they can impact the lives of humans in many ways. We lose sources of food to eat and species’ aid in maintaining the environment including providing atmospheric oxygen, controlling erosion, and cleansing the air and water when if certain species become extinct.
Without any doubts, certain objects becoming obsolete are impacting the lives the humans just like certain species becoming extinct. There is a fascinating photo collection titled Lost Labor depicting jobs that became obsolete because of certain objects becoming extinct. When certain objects such as ice machines became almost or completely obsolete, they killed off millions of jobs – laborers delivered ice to homes on daily basis.
One of the things I learned from observing the photo collection of Lost Labor is that many of those ‘lost’ jobs required a large amount of muscular work. So, in return, after spending hours pushing large blocks of ice, laborers had great work out in spite of the tedious work. Perhaps is that part of the reason why we have an obesity epidemic today?
When film photography was a booming business before the 21st century, Kodak did surely offer large number great job opportunities. Now with the advent of digital cameras, we rarely see photographers using film cameras. By this means, Kodak is being hurt by poor film sales and is having to trim the number of employees. Kodak had to cut as much as 18 percent of the jobs in this past year.2 So, thanks to the near extinction of film, these poor people who are laid off from Kodak and other film production companies are left with no jobs!
Objects are truly vital sources to our humans’ lives.
Whose turn is it to become extinct?! …And which objects will evolve?
1 Comment
Vivie
March 24, 2010 at 6:52 pm
FYI : We still have Ice Laborers in some ports ( for keeping fish fresh. ) And most hard labor jobs didn’t stop existing until at least into the 80’s.
I still remember my father with his farmer pull-ups , coming back from dirty work, when I was having my bedtime snack.Now he wears corduroy pants and a shirt to work.The shift happened when he got heavy duty machines ( tractors etc ) , but he still goes to work with his pickup truck and a bullseye for towing.
We actually have the same conflict here.Greece passed a law that disallows advertising in the interstates ( Big ADS at the side of interstate roads ) to reduce car accidents because a lot of drivers look at the ads and don’t look on their front.And now there’s a strike , and ads everywhere from these people that stick the ads , stating that this law effectively killed their branch of work , with work force somewhere at hundreds ( three digit hundreds actually ) . So a lot of people debate , what’s to come first , livelihood of all these people , or safety of all the driving people?
A lot of jobs get eliminated for a lot of reasons. A) because a machine does their work better and B) for law reasons.Or health reasons.The credit crunch made that picking even worse.
There’s a need for evolution.But also a need to not forget from where we are coming , which we , sadly , forget.And that’s just sad.