Predicting Obsolescence will study the potentiality of any given human technology or technological impliment to no longer serve its original purpose or no purpose at all. We will examine the phenomena of tools that have become so obscure as to not have a known use, the nature of technological change, and why some technologies continue to co-exist with modern equivalents long after their predicted demise.
Readings:
Petrosky, Henry. The Evolution of Useful Things: How Everyday Artifacts-From Forks and Pins to Paper Clips and Zippers-Came to be as They are.
The Pencil : A History of Design and Circumstance
Norman, Donald A. The Psychology of Everyday Things
