On top of what is proving to be one of the most challenging fall semesters in recent memory, I just learned that Windows 10–my current operating system–is no longer being supported by Microsoft on October 14. Which is great. Another reminder that I’m getting older, and old things, as tradition would have it, get tossed out.
“Obsolescence” is one of my favorite words — the sound of it, the spelling of it, the way my tongue presses against my teeth to form those soft Cs. But honestly, I hate that there is even a word to define this concept. I’ve been told on more than one occasion that I romanticize the past. And yes, guilty as charged. I find comfort in knowing that things once beloved had their moment, even if that moment has passed. My old laptop, for instance, carries a patina of late-night writing sessions, teaching prep, and the occasional panicked attempt to recover a draft — a relic not just of function, but of the life that passed through it.
So many times I’ve almost spilled my coffee on the keyboard, caught the laptop midway down a desk, or composed that perfect line of poetry that made my inner Whitman yawp with ecstasy. My laptop and I have a relationship not unlike intimate partners, chock full of drama and joy. I feel like I’d have to secure legal counsel to part with it.
Books that have gone out of print. Dresses that no longer fit. My jar of dimes — Roosevelt heads on one side, torches flanked by olive and oak on the other. I love old things.
But I don’t just love them for nostalgia’s sake. I love them because they resist the cultural demand for speed and replacement. My cracked faux-leather chair and silver wristwatch from the 1960s prove that endurance matters.
In contrast, the tech industry has turned impermanence into a selling point. The cycle isn’t just inconvenient for those of us who refuse to be swept up in the tech frenzy. Millions of laptops, phones, and tablets end up in landfills each year — perfectly functional, yet declared “too old” by modernity. Planned obsolescence doesn’t just make us buy more; it teaches us to value things, and people, less once they’ve outlived their “usefulness.”
This disposability isn’t an accident; it’s the business model. In Silicon Valley, the same place producing the next device before you’ve finished paying for the last one, longevity is treated almost as a flaw. Software expires. Phones are designed to slow down. It’s not just my OS that’s on borrowed time — it’s a whole culture of built-in obsolescence, reminding us that nothing is allowed to last.
And lately, the obsession with “new” has reached a fever pitch with artificial intelligence. Every few months, a new model launches with fanfare and urgency, as though the previous version is already hopelessly outdated.
Meanwhile, in my classroom at the University of Arizona, students are using the latest AI models to write their papers in a way that won’t raise suspicion, dappling their prose with “wannas” and artful typos to mimic authenticity. I can easily see through these attempts. Oh, you bet I can! Wait. Can I?
I sure do miss the old days, when drafting–whether done by a student or a professional–was not optional but essential. And what happens to those drafts? Those words, the work produced on those “obsolete” platforms? They still matter. If anything, they matter more because they remind us that permanence isn’t coded into the machine. It’s coded into the human effort behind it.
I know that the world doesn’t pause. Windows 10 won’t stop functioning tomorrow — technically — but once the security updates end, my digital life will be a little more vulnerable. It’s a small reminder that everything has a shelf life, whether software, trends, or even ourselves. In teaching, I see this all the time: students moving through the semester like leaves in a stream, their faces reminding me of peers from my own college days, each class a moment of energy and growth, already past before I realize it.
I find a strange poetry in living between two roads: one behind, paved with memory, and one ahead, uncertain and often frightening. My work, my writing, my routines — everyday traces of myself — exist in that liminal space, where the familiar and the new brush against one another. Perhaps this is what it means to age: to live more consciously in the in-between, to notice the obsolescence without despair, and to laugh, especially at the absurdity of being left behind by an operating system.
Maybe Windows 10 is just another gentle nudge: update when you must, but hold on fiercely to the things that can’t be replaced, like a battered old laptop that still hums with memory, or the students whose words on a page outlast the software used to write them.
Originally printed by The San Francisco Chronicle: https://www.sfchronicle.com/opinion/openforum/article/windows-10-obsolete-ai-tech-21086971.php