An essay about how a thirty-year-old mixtape led me to think about technology, memory, and the strange persistence of things we’ve already declared obsolete.

People are real quick to declare things obsolete without thinking about Pareto frontiers.

Tapes and floppies are "obsolete" if you don't have to worry about malicious controllers embedded in flash media or hard drives.

Paper is "obsolete" if you don't have to worry about cost per square inch of displaying static information, or about running without batteries.

Thanks. Digging out my shoebox of college mix tapes right now.