As Hubby and I sift through our stuff to get ready for a move, interesting items pop up. Last week I discussed the “Love Ya 2 Pizzas” box (which would have been very appropriate to today – Valentine’s Day). Today, it’s the receipt for my iPod.
I came across this Walmart receipt for my Apple iPod music player while I was gathering old electronics from around the house for recycling. It was still in the plastic box the iPod was packaged in, though the iPod was in a different location.
I couldn’t remember what version of iPod I had, but it was a mint green color (because of course this is the primary method for identifying a specific model of tech!). For some reason, 3rd generation came to mind.
I found a helpful site from Apple that allowed me to identify that my music player was a 3rd generation iPod nano. (Turns out the color was useful to identifying the specific generation.)
According to the site, my nano was released in September 2007. My receipt says I bought the iPod on November 17, 2007, so it wasn’t long after the release date. That makes it look like I’m some sort of early adopter of tech, but I’m not. I mean, really, it took me lots and lots of generation releases of iPods in order to get around to buying one. I read an article once that said that all of us who use digital tech are potentially early adopters because we happen to purchase the newest of any technology at the point when we are ready to buy. It makes sense because tech so quickly becomes obsolete. Why purchase last year’s model when it is already a third of the way through its life toward planned obsolescence?
The fact that it is 2022 and I’ve just now recycled the iPod at 15 years of age shows another couple of tech habits most of us practice. We continue using digital devices beyond their manufacturers’ “expiration” or continued support dates and we keep them in our homes until we can figure out how to recycle them properly. I haven’t used the nano for many years because I carry my digital music files on my phone and computer.
No, young Padawan, I don’t have an online music subscription service. In a quirk of my Gen X upbringing and my history museum training, I continue to purchase compact discs (CDs) of my favorite music and rip them to my digital devices, keeping the CDs as backups in case I lose the digital files. I don’t fully trust online services to always be available when I need them. Considering that cyber warfare is becoming more common, with digital infrastructure being attacked around the world, this lack of trust seems sensible to me. I’ve also had another digital device holding downloaded music go kaput on me, thus losing the music and having to purchase it again, so personal experience plays into this.
In any case, it was time for the iPod nano to go, along with our first digital camera, an old scanner, an Xbox, a TV remote, mini speakers, and a bunch of cords. I was pleased to discover that Best Buy has a technology recycling program that is pretty comprehensive. I do hope the items I brought in for recycling are actually dismantled and sorted so the materials can be reused and not just shipped to another country for hazardous landfilling.
Meanwhile, I will continue excavating my past as I sort through the above-ground landfill that is our home.