Impaled: I go with my agenda, and my agenda with me

At last we know what is "out": the typewriter is already irrevocably out. And the compact disc, the USB stick, the so-called Rolodex (that rotating card index for business cards that you could play around with so wonderfully while making phone calls), the note calendar, the pocket calculator, the desk phone, the paper bucket, the paper shredder and the desktop PC are all right on the brink of the abyss. And tomorrow they will all be one step ahead.

Are you attached to at least four of these ten things, use them every day and can hardly imagine life without them? Then you're like me - and we're old news. Pixmania-PRO, an office equipment distributor based in Paris, has taken the liberty of making this outrageous statement. This company has analyzed its sales figures and compiled a black list of office veterans who are to be deleted from the sales catalog in the future. This means that it could soon be very embarrassing for you when your grandchildren discover your pocket agenda. Start thinking of a clever hiding place. Or at least a good excuse.

Reassuringly, where old things die, new things sprout. Pixmania-PRO, for example, sees the Eco-Button coming, a device that indicates via USB connection when your computer has been inactive for a long time. This is supposed to encourage you to switch to standby. Oh great. Now not only does my inbox, Twitter and Xing blink, now my entire computer blinks when it wants to take a nap. A great idea that will definitely catch on very quickly. I praise my leather agenda (with offline address book!). And the good old typewriter. It didn't use any electricity at all. Not even for blinking.

The past is sometimes the future

Compared to the old junk, however, augmented reality, social media, cloud computing and tablet PCs are brutally "in" or at least on everyone's lips. However, all of this technical junk also has its quirks. For the writer, the worst is that, according to Duden (that yellow book on your desk with the thick layer of dust on top), every word needs a hyphen. But it gets even more dramatic: augmented reality doesn't quite catch on because no one has an idea how to use the new possibilities cleverly and beyond superfluous gimmickry. Social media divide humanity into lovers and haters, believers and non-believers, users and ignorers. And no one has ever built a skyscraper on a deep rift. What cloud computing is has only been nebulously bandied about, so cloud 7 of data storage is still a long way off. And tablet PCs have problems with their readers. They are totally unfocused and no longer check what they are reading. Golly.

The U.S. publisher Bonnier has discovered this insane decline in intellect through a study. Bonnier publishes titles such as "Popular Science" and found that tablet users e-mail, play games or read other news while reading an article. Outrageous. Are they allowed to do that? Calm down, dear Bonniers. All this doesn't necessarily mean that readers don't finish reading a text, nor that they don't understand what's in it. Ever heard of multitasking? (That's also "in" these days.) But Bonnier isn't worried about its readers at all. The study served to create new forms of advertising for tablets. That's where the wind is blowing from. Of course, advertisers want full content distraction, not half. But they haven't reckoned with the cleverness of their readers. If things get too colorful for them, they can simply use their tablet to serve the three o'clock tea. That - and I have to admit this without envy - is not possible with my pocket agenda.