THE march of technology is a social as well as an economic phenomenon. Some whole industries, such as personal computers, seem to rely on the insatiable desire of people for the latest gadget. Never mind whether you really need it: just throw away your old computer, television, hi-fi, or whatever and buy a newer, better (and often cheaper) one. An unwelcome side-effect is an instinctive tendency to disparage older technologies in favor of newer ones.

Yet ditching the old completely can often prove a mistake-because technologies that are dismissed as yesterday’s habits sometimes turn out to be not such old hat after all. What was once regarded as obsolete can, with a minor tweak or embellishment, be revived as fast as any old fashion.

The latest instance of an old technology to be rehabilitated in just such a way is clockwork. Once a standard method of powering clocks, watches and children’s toys, it fell from grace with the rise of battery-powered gadgets. Yet, as the power needed by modern circuitry decreases, clockwork is becoming a feasible power source once more. Wine-up radios and torches are on sale. The American military is evaluating hand-cranked satellite-navigation devices and landmine detectors that would save soldiers from having to lug bulky battery packs around.

Plenty of other mechanical devices have been revived too. A hundred years ago, all calculators were mechanical, but they were displaced by electronic ones containing valves, then transistors, and finally microprocessors. Now microscopic mechanical components are staging a comeback at the heart of a new class of silicon chips. Such microelectro-mechanical systems can sometimes do things that electronics cannot: tiny silicon arms and levers can, for example, act as compact filters, timekeepers, optical switches and sensors.

Transport offers other examples. Filthy, soot-belching steam locomotives were rejected in favor of diesel and electric ones decades ago. Now new, modernized steam engines are sometimes more efficient and more environmentally friendly than diesels. Airships and balloons are also poised to return to the ascendant. New airships, built with space-age materials and filled with inert helium rather than explosive hydrogen, are taking to the skies. Plans have been floated to use them as fixed communications relay-stations over big cities. Researchers are looking into the use of balloons to carry scientific instruments over the surface of other planets.

Or consider the triumph or paper. The computer has entirely failed to dethrone paper; instead, computers make it easier to generate documents, and the introduction of the PC, far from fostering the paperless office, has led to a huge increase in bumf. It is even possible to spot a similar pattern in wars: as events in Kosovo are showing, even the stealthiest fighter/bomber cannot substitute for the man on the ground with a machinegun.

Whirrr

The lesson of history is, in short, that even apparently moribund technologies such as clockwork have a persistent habit of, well, springing back to life. That is worth remembering next time you hear the death-knell being sounded for a supposedly outmoded way of doing things. Last year’s habit can often turn out to be near year’s habit too.

© 1999 The Economist Newspaper Group, Inc.
Reprinted with permission. Further reproduction prohibited.