16 Objects That Were Common in 2010, But In 2020 They’ve All but Disappeared

Technology is relentless. Some objects that a few years ago were considered super-advanced, today have become obsolete… And it makes us nostalgic to see them in our drawers or even in photos. Who, for example, remembers the once super-modern BlackBerrys? Or the once famous digital agendas, which, in turn, replaced many paper agendas? Anyway, going back just 10 years in time, we can find a lot of equipment that were considered the most advanced and were loved by the young people of the so-called Generation X — those born between 1965 and 1979 — but that today are seen as true museum pieces. by the young Generation Y, also known as Millennials (or millennials, born from 1980 to 2000).

O awesome.club features a compilation of 16 objects that were common in 2010 but are practically retired these days.

With the emergence of cell phones touch screen, phones with a physical keyboard, like the Nokia 1100 and BlackBerry, among others, have gone down in history. Although some models continue to be sold, most people tend to prefer touchscreen devices.

The biggest representative of this mini-keyboard era, BlackBerry had its heyday in the early 2010s. With the advancement of touch screen, however, the Canadian brand began to lose market share quickly to the point that, in 2014, it recorded losses of 1 billion dollars, which caused the dismissal of 4,500 employees. Finally, in 2016, the brand announced that it would stop manufacturing cell phones. The losses are due, among other factors, to the emergence of new messaging applications, such as WhatsApp, and the advance of competition, especially from Apple and Samsung and, more recently, from China’s Huawey.

These devices, used for storing files and listening to music, are familiar to many people. The MP3 format was widely used in the early 2010s and devices that played music became super popular. Music streaming platforms, however (such as Deezer and Spotify), which allow you to listen to everything on your phone without having to store files, have made the system obsolete. The same fate had the MP4, a little more advanced and that already allowed, in addition to listening to music, watching videos and seeing images. Like its predecessor, it was eventually replaced by cell phones.

The curious thing is that even today some of these players continue to be produced, although most models are no longer manufactured. But you can still find some devices on specialized websites as true “technological relics”, at triple the original price.

While some people continue to use DVDs to store multimedia content, they too have fallen victim to streaming — in this case, from platforms like Netflix and Amazon Prime Video. Decades ago, it was normal for us to go to video stores, first to rent movies on VHS and then on DVD. But, as we mentioned, these technologies were “swallowed up” by the services of streaming🇧🇷

Due to its lack of practicality in relation to the technology of the streaming (needed connection to the TV and physical displacement to stores or rental companies), DVDs players they were retired in most houses and ended up in the back of the closets. After all, it is much easier to connect directly through the TV itself or a computer to watch your favorite series and movies.

Telephone directories were books or catalogs provided by telephone companies (or independent companies) with the contact details of people who had a telephone in a given city, as well as the numbers of public utility lines. However, today they are no longer distributed and only exist in electronic format or directly on the internet.

Younger people may not know them, but these lists contained, in alphabetical order, the names, addresses and phone numbers of users and were a very useful tool to facilitate communication between people before the arrival of social networks and Google. .

About 10 years ago, it was still relatively common to see people on the streets consulting city maps to locate themselves or to reach their destination during a trip. However, today they have been almost completely replaced by cell phone GPS systems, which indicate, even out loud, the direction to be followed to reach a certain place.

Apps like Google Maps and Waze are very convenient and allow you to get to your destination faster, which has made paper maps obsolete.

Nowadays, those classic alarm clocks, with loud sound and clock with hands are used more as decoration or souvenir items than, properly, to wake people up. The fact is that, like most of the objects on our list, they have been replaced by the cell phone, which we use for a multitude of tasks. It is worth remembering that even digital alarm clocks (which were in vogue for some time) fell into disuse, replaced by smartphones🇧🇷

In the early 2010s, digital cameras were a real object of desire. Practical, portable and with a good resolution, they had replaced analog photography. A lot of people saved up for months to buy one. But they were also “victims” of the advance of cell phones and practically fell into disuse.

Equipped with numerous features and capable of producing very high quality images and videos, smartphones fell in the public’s taste, especially the younger ones, just at the moment when social networks such as Facebook and Instagram reached their peak of popularity,

In the days when there were no cell phones, pay phones were the salvation of those who were on the street and needed to make a phone call. But the fact is that, with the popularization of mobile phones, they have been losing importance and disappearing. Those who are older remember the times of coins or tokens (and the expression “has it dropped?”) and, later, of collectible cards.

According to a recent study, some Latin American countries have more cell phones than inhabitants — the data, it is important to clarify, is statistical, which may mean that some people do not have devices while others have more than one. smartphone🇧🇷 Be that as it may, the fact is that cell phones are now ubiquitous and have turned payphones into museum pieces. In Brazil, there are about 230 million devices, according to Fundação Getúlio Vargas (FGV).

Those books with dozens of images of memories, those sentimental photo albums that excited and moved us some 10 years ago or more have themselves turned into memories.

Nowadays, most users simply have albums on their own social networks — such as Facebook, Instagram and Pinterest, with the advantage that these albums are interactive and open to everyone — as long as the user wants to, of course. The oldest photos themselves — analogue ones — have migrated to social networks, as many users choose to scan them or simply take the “photo of the photo”, which can thus be shared virtually.

In the alphabetical address book, we wrote down the names, addresses and telephone numbers of the contacts by hand. Usually, the agenda was next to the landline phone, on a small table, or inside the bags and folders for daily use.

Well, as everyone knows, this is another object that lost its function with the advancement of technology. Nowadays, any contact is at our fingertips on our cell phone or, in the worst case, on our computer, in the email list. If none of these features work, you can always send a message via social media. Do you miss these notebooks? Tell us in the comments.

An advance from the paper notebooks we just showed you, digital diaries were short-lived. They barely started to be successful and were replaced by cell phones. These calendars functioned as portable databases.

But, as we mentioned, they lost ground to cell phones, which aggregate numerous functions in a single device – which is why they replaced so many objects on this list.

Replacing the old cassette tape recorders, digital devices were very successful among journalists, for example, who used them to record interviews. They were yet another victim of the advance of cell phones. Nowadays, the voice recorder is one of the icons that populate the screen of our devices, allowing us to record any conversation in a practical and safe way.

Although CDs still exist and are used to store information, the way of listening to music has changed a lot in recent times. Until a few years ago, major labels offered a wide variety of records in physical stores. Many people spent hours “dating” them and listening to them in stores, even, before choosing which one to take. There was even a period when pirated copies invaded the world, wiping out a good part of these companies’ profits.

These media, however, lost space, as we have already mentioned, for the services of streaming, the same ones that ended up with MP3 players. Today, with these services, we can access any song on our cell phones (and virtually any record or style) on our cell phone, without having to go to a store.

The publishing industry is perhaps one of those that has undergone the greatest transformation with the advancement of the Internet and cell phones. The consumption of paper books, newspapers and magazines has practically become a thing of the past and, of course, cookbooks have fallen victim to this process. Today, just accessing YouTube from your cell phone gives you immediate access to any recipe, with different variations of ingredients, degrees of difficulty and authors. Do you want to have access to the recipes of this super-awarded international chef? Just browse your videos.

Although some homes still have a landline phone, most family members use their personal cell phone to communicate, hence the device has become nothing more than a decorative object or is mainly used by the elderly in the family.

The fax, once a symbol of technology, has been eliminated from offices. They were retired for more practical features like emails.

Although they are still a kind of “baby” for some families, the leaves (with landscapes, pictures of animals or babies and which were fixed in some corner of the kitchen),…