Cables, cables everywhere

In a post yesterday about FireWire I touched on the millions of wall warts that enter landfills each year. In “My Life With Cables” on the New York Times Website, the artist Christoph Niemann takes a humorous, graphical look at the topic, describing the rat’s nest of cables and adapters that can plague one household. “My desk is far from organized,” he writes, “but the mess on top pales compared to the chaos lurking below. I just did a quick inventory and counted a staggering 31 cables running riot down there.” And as he notes, the cables are not only messy—they are costly: “Adding to the insult: those Frankencables are immorally expensive. I have a habit of losing power adapters when traveling, and spend a small fortune on replacements. When I close my eyes, I can see Mr. Radio and Mrs. Shack living on an island made of solid gold.” Not to mention the iGo folks.

Niemann notes that he could benefit from wireless technology but says wireless has it’s own drawbacks: “If it’s not attached to a cable, I will lose it.” And, of course, wireless power supplies are likely to be hugely inefficient—see “Intel increases consumer-product power consumption 50%” by my colleague Paul Rako.

Niemann concludes with an illustration of an old man regaling a child with stories about video adapters the size of the Great Pyramid. He writes, “I am sure that a generation from now, all our hassles with cables will be long forgotten. But I pledge to keep history alive, and look forward to telling my grandkids stories of SCSI cables, unpolarized NEMA 1-15 sockets, and DVI plugs.”