Not Impossible: The Rebirth of the Polaroid

Just read this excellent Wall Street Journal piece about The Impossible Project’s attempt to rebirth the Polaroid. I don’t know if that is a correct usage of the word rebirth—you can be reborn, I guess, but are you ever rebirthed? I know have the image in my haead of a vintage Polaroid camera coming out of a big gaping…uh, never mind. I’ll leave that image in my mind, or perhaps in the hands of people with better Photoshop skills than I.  Anyway, in the article, Eric Felten writes: 

Modern high-tech goods aren’t like the buggy-whip, that icon of superannuated technologies on the receiving end of creative destruction. We could go centuries without a single buggy-whip being made; but if there were a new fad for buggies, it wouldn’t take much in the way of reverse-engineering to figure out how to recreate the old leather horse prod. But many 20th-century products have been made through such elaborate and arcane manufacturing processes that, if the custom machinery and proprietary knowledge for working them are lost, there is no getting them back.

Sing it man! He continues: 

There are plenty of vintage technologies that have their followings and can survive as niche products. Yet this will work only if they can ratchet down from a mass-market footing to the small scale of serving enthusiasts, and do it fast enough to prevent the knowledge and equipment for making the endangered product from being lost. There may be more such challenges ahead than we’ve imagined. Come the day when all new cars are electric and service stations have replaced their pumps with power sockets, where will the proud owner of a ‘64 Austin-Healey get any gasoline to keep his roadster on the road?

Poor Austin-Healey owner! Boohoo! Just kidding. My Austin-Healey works quite well as long as it maintains a gluten-free diet. Go on and read the rest of the article here. If you’re a Polaroid person, head over to the TheImpossibleProject’s site where $21 will buy you eight opportunities to capture the world in newly-made sepia-toned monochrome Polaroid film. 

(via twitter.com/sxseventy)

4

Polaroids, Santa Fe, Confusion, and Barbra

So, there was big news today: hardly a year after Polaroid’s factories closed their doors, the company that owns its licensing rights announced that it will produce Polaroids again!  The Impossible Project, a group that’s been working to produce Polaroid film for old cameras, will be making the film. To those of us who have spent months and months mourning the death of Polaroids, this is kind of a shock. I’m more of an Old Testament girl, but I believe there’s something like this that happens in the bible. It’s called Easter.

In the world of obsolescence, this is big news. Indeed, it makes my book’s section on Polaroids look…obsolete! Which I guess is okay, because it’s in a book called Obsolete. As a chronicler of such things, I regret that I didn’t jump on this news earlier today. My excuse? I’m in Santa Fe, and everything here seems a little complicated somehow. Little tasks seem strangely difficult: getting online, spelling Albuquerque, calling a cab. (There’s only one taxi service here and the dispatcher is a douche bag. I informed him of this fact. If you want to tell him yourself, his number is 505-438-0000). Other confusions: twice today I said I was in San Francisco. Same initials! Once I told someone I was in Arizona. I’m going to blame the altitude. That, and the fact that I’ve had George Costanza’s answering machine message playing on loop in my head all day.

Currently, I’m sitting in a hotel room that doesn’t have a channel guide on the TV. Talk about obsolete! I feel bereft. I’ve been trying to find The Daily Show for an hour but gave up and am now watching Barbra Streisand and Ryan O’Neal in the 1979 film The Main Event. This would be a bit of alright were it not dubbed in Spanish.

All that is to say that I’m aware I was not a very good blogger today. BUT, I did find someone with an obsolete tattoo. May I present:

TATTOOS OF OBSOLETE OBJECTS: Vol. III, Is. 6

This is Vanessa O’Brien, age 20. She told me she got this keyhole because it reminded her of some important things that happened to her a few years ago. She didn’t elucidate but it’s a keyhole and it’s on her chest, so I’m guessing…she had a locksmith give her a boob job. Honestly, at first glance I thought it was the generic women’s bathroom symbol minus the arms and the legs. But, like I said, I seem to be a little slow today.

But wait! I also found an entry for The Pay Phone Project. This one is Volume X, Is. 1. I spotted it at the College of Santa Fe. More notable than the pay phone, however, is the lynched phone book hanging below it. Clearly, this a hard economy for telephone directories. I hope the Santa Fe cab company buys ads by the dozen.

2