Kalyani Tupkary

I n eighty-five essays, contributors nominate “extinct” objects and address them in a series of short, vivid, sometimes personal accounts, speaking not only of obsolete technologies, but of other ways of thinking, making, and interacting with the world.  Extinct  is filled with curious, half-remembered objects, each one evoking a future that never

Time isn’t like the other senses, Eagleman says. Sight, smell, touch, taste, and hearing are relatively easy to isolate in the brain. They have discrete functions that rarely overlap: it’s hard to describe the taste of a sound, the color of a smell, or the scent of a feeling. … But a sense of time is threaded through everything we perceive. 

In the 20th-century office, female file clerks were expected to handle papers — but not to understand their contents.

To underscore their modernity, filing cabinets were called ‘equipment,’ ‘appliances,’ and ‘machines’ — not furniture.

Put another way, who stands outside for hours, gazing at a starflower instead of a Samsung Galaxy? When you’re stalking a hawkweed at daybreak, time is an afterthought.