Unplugged and overplayed
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Time for a blast from the past. Harmlessly enough, this technology was originally introduced to save users the pain of manually configuring their ISA cards (do you even remember the ISA bus?). I’m referring, of course, to ‘Plug and Play’ (PnP for short; ‘Plug and Pray’ for the cynical).
End of flashback.
Today, ‘plug and play’ can describe just about anything that the marketers have decided is easy to set up and use (seemingly whether or not it actually is). For instance, do you think the term was ever meant to apply to residential solar power systems? Or search Amazon.com for the term, and marvel at the number of video games that are ‘plug and play’ — and that’s perhaps the most literal usage of the phrase ever. You plug the game in to your TV, and you play it. Plug and play.
Yet, oddly enough, it didn’t make CNet’s list of the top 10 buzzwords. To their shame, in my humble opinion.
I was scrapping some old PCs just yesterday and came across an ISA modem!
I threw it in the trash. I’m a total packrat when it comes to this stuff. I was going to save a couple of the machines we were trashing for their cases, except I’m sick of tripping over them. I did save the IDE cables and the PCI slot covers.
Before throwing it out, I did briefly debate whether the ISA modem might have value as an antique.