The strange endurance of obsolescence

Why do some things keep on being used when an up-to-date replacement is clearly much better?

On the bridge of each sizeable seagoing ship there is an installation called the Global Maritime Distress and Signaling System (GMDSS), essentially a computerized radio.  It’s required by international regulations (unless the ship has a full-time radio officer, but those are expensive and so very rare).  The operating system is DOS 2.0.  That’s something you might have to ask your grandfather about, or find in some well-stocked museum of technology.  It has been obsolete for decades.  But there it is, required by law.

Coming ashore, you might find your way to a fencing match.  Fencing is a sport, not a life-or-death contest, so the weapons are not sharp and winning is not determined by wounds inflicted.  A century ago, it was up to the referee to determine whether a touch was in fact scored; this led to a certain amount of theatrics.  Nowadays, there are spring-loaded electrical switches on the tips of the epees.  Wires lead from them down the blade, into a socket behind the hand-guard.  The fencer plugs a cord into the socket, a cord that leads inside the canvas jacket sleeve, behind the back and out; the other end of the cord plugs into another cord on a spring-loaded reel, leading eventually to the electronic scoring machine.

This is nineteenth-century technology.  The various mechanical springs and contacts are subject to breakage and mis-adjustment, since the need to make them small and light conflicts with the need to make them strong and robust, and the thin wires along the blade are also subject to damage.

It would not be hard at all to design a solid-state wireless tip, one that would transmit directly to the scoring machine.  That would do away with springs, tiny screws, wires that break and all the associated trouble.  As it would be easy to computerize a ship’s radio system with something like a smartphone app, which would be physically much smaller, consume negligible power and (perhaps most important) not require ships’ officers to be skilled in digital archaeology.  But neither of these has happened, nor is either in prospect.  Why?

Partly there is the enormous inertia of any international organization.  Apart from simple conservatism (which should not be discounted, either among mariners or fencers), it’s extremely difficult to get people from many nations and cultures to agree on anything, even if they all agree that an agreement is necessary.

But mostly there is the enormous inertia of a system in place.  To shift to a newer operating system for the ships’ radios would require replacing everything now installed and retraining every crew.  Though it could be phased-in over time, it’s still a vast expense, and one that the poorer countries might have trouble meeting.

At least radios controlled by a new app would be able to talk to radios controlled by DOS 2.0.  Replacing the current scoring equipment in fencing by a wireless system would require everyone to switch at once; or perhaps there would be a period of time in which fencers, tournaments and so forth would have to designate themselves “wired” or “wireless.”  Confusion would be inevitable, as indeed would be protests over the fairness of dual-track rankings and contests.  The greatest problem, though, would be the simple expense of everyone having to replace their equipment.  It would add to the cost of a sport that is already not cheap.

So we shall continue to use the technology of three or twelve decades ago, in spite of the fact that something clearly better is easily available.  A little difficulty or expense multiplied many times, becomes insurmountable.