One question about old-school technolgy for me is:  how does something become “old school” regardless of whether it is hardware, software, processes and…..dare I say it?…..people?

As others have asked:  Is an iPhone 1 old-school?  You could argue that’s just an outdated model of a device, not a technology and certainly not a technology that has outlived its usefullness.  Is an iPhone 4 “old school” just because the iPhone 4S is available?  Not in my view!

We’ve also mentioned fax machines (or more correctly facsimile technology).  Its still being used although perhaps it has morphed into something different from the old noisy telephone machines with slimy paper.  Today I receive a fax on my desktop and simply display it on the screen.  Since 99% of them are spam,  I am happy not to have to print them.  If I really wanted to I could also send a fax without needing a special device through a service (never done it though).  So perhaps the technology itself is not old-school but the traditional devices are.  The engineering evolves faster than the technology.

What about software?  Would you say an older version of Word (i.e., Word 2007) is old-school or just an old version, with the underlying technology not yet being old-school technology?   Will word processing tehnology ever be old-school?  Will we always require word processing, spreadsheets and presentation software?  Is COBOL programming old-school?

So, how to classify all the various technologies f IT - new, old, old-school ?  Are there other categories?

I won’t even start to apply this thinking, as others have done, to offices, busines processes, or people……come to think of it, am I old-school or just old?