What's the oldest technology you continue using?

I use a wheel almost everyday still

Stick, great for getting stuff out of holes

The wheel, rope, fire.

Spoons, which predate forks, fire, and wheels by about two million years.

As physical tech:

• we have lever door handles at work and wheel and axle door knobs at home.

As digital tech:

• Comma Separated Values as a notation predates computers. Then CSV has been used as a computer file format at least since one of the Fortran variants added support in 1972.

• The implementation has changed as filesystems evolve but the basic directory/file model of data storage and the associated tools ls/dir, cd, rm/del have been around a while. ls has been known by that name since Multics in 1969, but can trace its lineage back to listfon CTSS in 1961.

Anything that predates copy/paste is doing alright.

Fire is pretty great and I use it all the time.

Fire.

I often use the position of the sun to figure out what direction I'm going.

Sewing machines. I'm a professional cosplayer and sewing/embroidering is a big part of that. My newest machine is from 2008. After that, they started adding in all these different electronic features, that are garbage. The machines both break easily and are limited to the technology/software of that time. You want a machine that can sew through leather and silk with the same grace, get an older machine. If you want something newer, avoid electronics or anything with a touchscreen.

My Husqvarna Viking Emerald 118 is so strong that when sewing corsets, my needle commonly punches through the thick ZipTies, that I use for boning, like they were butter. It's a beast of a machine. If she ever breaks, I'm going to find a used one.

I’m pretty sure I got a lever around here somewhere

Lever. Suck on that wheel and fire people!

God damn, none of you use toilets? Disgustan!

You need to specify whether you're taking about digital or analog technology, or some other limit on the question, because i think you're not looking for answers like "fire" or as another user replied "shoes".

In computing? RS232 interfaces.

In general? Fire.

Agriculture

Email. Pretty much the first network-related utility.

Bicycle

I eat bread, I drink beer too. Those technologies are both around 40k years old iirc. In terms of computing, probably a calendar, time, or a GBA depending on your definition of computing

I suppose SSH has been around for ages, I use that

Wheel

Funny responses, but to get to what you're looking for: IRC.

Used it decades ago, and got back to it a few years ago. Surprisingly, most of the people I chat with are under 40, and it's close knit enough that:

• I play games with them
• Have met, and will meet others
• Hired someone via an IRC connection (who I am now in a channel with after we no longer work together)

I ude Emacs as my peferred text editor.

For a computer, I recently learned there are mod kits for the game boy, so i installed a backlit screen on mine. I use rechargeable batteries with it.

The headphone jack on the laptop is probably the oldest style computer tech I use.

The oldest physical objects I own and use daily are the iron skillets.

As far as overall, not just computer? I make sourdough bread, grow stuff in a garden. The sourdough uses electricity to cook so that part isn't old tech but the grabbing wild yeast from the air to rise it is ancient technology.

I'd have to say the hair comb.

Fire

IPv4? Email? Gas fireplace?

I guess if you want a real answer it's probably the terminal? I prefer terminal over GUI generally speaking.

I have a grandfather clock I inherited. It's about 100 years old.

I have a 10 megabit ethernet hub (not switch) that I still use in my homelab. It's just a super easy way to throttle devices and helpful for diagnosing network issues.

TCP maybe.

A Microsoft SideWinder wheel for Windows 98. Still works great on Windows 11, I use it to play Euro Truck Simulator 2.

A lot of medical labs still use analyzers and stuff from the '80s and only replace them when they die, so a lot of people getting healthcare might be using older tech than they think :)

Whilst I'm being cheeky, spoon and probably bowl technology remains relatively unchanged for a huge amount of time.

I guess the oldest thing I regularly use is my tractor from the '90s. I do often wish I hadn't accidentally killed my Amiga 500 as I'd likely still be gaming on that occasionally.

A pencil.

Knives.

I use a typewriter occasionally at work.

RSS is the first app I would install on new devices if they didn't automatically migrate all my apps and data for me. That there are people who know about RSS and don't use it surprises me, somewhat.

Inclined plane. Arguably older than fire. Used as a part of a pointy stick.

GNU Emacs, from the 1980s

A spade or a shovel or something??

Yesterday I used an axe to chop firewood.

RSS feeds are so nice. I'm still frustrated that Facebook moved away from an in-order timeline. (Or would be if I used it for anything other than family chats)

An ordered list of things you haven't seen yet on <topic> instead of a mostly random list from everywhere. Amazing.

On special occasions I grind coffee beans with a small wooden frame coffee grinder my grandparents got as wedding present sometime in the 1930's. Made and gifted for the couple by the grooms brother.

1990s solar powered calculator.

I hope they dig one up in 10000 years and it still works.

A lever and a pulley and an inclined plane.

SQL.

I still use emacs pretty frequently for coding. I forced myself to start with VSCode recently, and it was way bigger an improvement than I expected it to be, but being able to do text editing without an extended negotiation with the software being involved is still pretty nice sometimes.

Winamp

I have a Kindle from 2011 that's still in perfect condition and gets daily use. Every now and then I'm tempted to get a newer eReader but I can't come up with a single reason to actually do it.

My wife just dug an old iPod that must be from ~2008 from some box in the basement so she can listen to music at work all day without killing the battery on her phone.

Black powder guns. What a total pain in the ass. But they're damned fun when they go bang.

I occasionally harness fire. Does that count?

Probably the FM radio.

Or the fridge or the light bulb.

Zune, 2nd gen. Pretty much only on road trips since the battery only lasts about 10 minutes but as long as that squircle keeps working, the tunes keep flowing.

I have a “data transcription machine” which is meant to pull data off of old media. It has:

• 3½″+5¼″ combo floppy drive
• IDE hot swap cage
• Zip 250 IDE drive
• Jaz 2Gb SCSI drive
• Internal 50-pin and 68-pin SCSI controllers

Let’s just say that I have enough devices cross my bench that SpinRite 6 gets a monthly workout on some piece of old storage tech or another. Not everything is recoverable, but…

winrar, i think

I drive a 20 year old car and my main phone is a dumbphone made in 2017. I also use that to play 20 year old mp3s.

Holy crap. Gopher is old AF.

I still use a sony walkman to listen to music on cassette tape. Unlike my phone, it has a headphone jack. It's also nice being able to physically own music in such a compact form factor. It helps that the artists I listen to are starting to put their albums on tape as well.

Maybe my DS Lite? It's from 18 years ago and I still kinda like the form factor. Honorable mentions to my DSi and DSi XL. They all have working batteries still too, go figure!

Blanket. I'm believe that technology was invented before clothes or even fire.

My clock radio alarm is from the late 80's, I guess. It was my Dad's before and it still works fine.

I own a balance scale, I was getting sick of dying batteries in modern ones

Clothing probaby. Admittedly, it's a bit more advanced than simple animal furs. I also have a knife, but again, probably a touch better than a sharpened piece of flint...

my iPod Touch 4 that currently works as a whatever i want information displayer. I've previously made it display CPU/GPU temps and RAM usage percentage as a graph, but now it pretty much is a terminal command history log displayer.

I still occasionally use the bread maker my family got as a gift about 30 years ago.

I still have a monitor on my main setup that uses DVI because I'm too cheap to upgrade.

I bought a manual scale, because all the electric ones turn off automatically before i get a chance look how much it actually weighs and there is no easy way to subtract the weight of the plate. Also no super specific small batteries bs. Edit: it can do Tara but if it shuts itself off while i was measuring flour, now i have flour on a plate. How do i know how much the flour weighs minus the plate? That's my problem.

I listen to radio

I love an automatic mechanical watch. Still use CDs. At work I occasionally need to use 3.5" floppy disks. Still read paper books.

Email?

I love artificial lights, without them interior lighting would be hard af with candles

Beer!

My penis is pretty old at this point...

I still use clippers bought in 2015

Mid nineties guitar.

Newspapers, online news is an echo chamber of personalized content

FTP

Lenovo Thinkpad X200t by your intended meaning. I don't know if my Meade ETX-60 is older... might be... I haven't checked date codes or anything, but I have several microprocessors and discrete logic chips for breadboarding. Probably, the oldest is a tossup between Z80, 6502, 8088, 6800, 68k, or some CD4000 series logic. Maybe a few of my 74xx chips are older. I have a little bench power supply that was made in the 50's somewhere in my closet. I have a Wander bike my family put in storage that is from the 40's or early 50's.

awk
grep
sed
and lots of other individual programs written long before I was born

The domain name system
The web
email
RSS

wired everything

It would actually be easier to list the things I use that wouldn't be considered old, as those are the exceptions.

Shoes.

There's a few appliances that we refuse to let go. If it ain't broke, don't fix it. My wife loves our early 1970's General Electric range. It's got push button controls that are built into the range hood. That was actually a brilliant idea since it keeps the controls from getting all greasy and my little kids can't reach them.

Our old vacuum, a 1953 Kirby (which I've had for 25 years) has been semi-retired. Our house has a 1970's Kenmore central vac. Just put a new motor in it last year so it should be good to go for a while, hopefully.

Paper datewheel

Headphone jacks and BNC connectors for computing. For hammering things, a rock sometimes.

Various styles of loincloth and several different clubs

Teletext

Apart from the obvious stuff like wheels and fire:

I recently got my hands on an analogue camera (Canon EOS 300), which I'm now using to take some pictures. The first batch of pictures got back last week and confirmed to me that the device is still in working condition.

Besides that I also have an old Philips tape player that used to use until one of the gears snapped in half. I ordered a replacement gear but getting to the gear and replacing it has proven more challenging than hoped so I'm not using it currently.

And I still collect CDs, even though I also use Spotify.

Do you mean oldest as in invented the longest time ago or oldest as in that specific technological artefact that i use is the oldest one i have?
For the first one i guess cooking?
For the second one its definitely my microwave oven, made in 1991.

A printer that is older than me, Samsung SCX-4216F. It supports fax, maybe I should set it up some time. A satellite receiver that supports only SD streams. Olympics are streamed from 2 channels and one of them does not have SD variant so we have to stream games on that channel from Internet.

If we're talking about technology that is no longer widely used, it's probably my old HP48SX from the early 90s. Still use it sometimes as a desk calculator, though I have an HP48GX emulator app on my phone as well. Gotta have my RPN.

My receiver for my tv setup is a 1970s Pioneer. I like the big ol knobs on it and the warm lighting.

Edit to add I also love my Pebble smart watches (Go Rebble for keeping them running!)

I keep an iPod in my purse, but I also keep a gameboy pocket in there for a hundredth Pokemon Red playthrough whenever I have some downtime.

CRT TV

Love an analog clock

PS Vita for Gundam Breaker 3. The end of this god damned month can’t come soon enough, I’m so fuckin’ excited for Breaker 4.

Baretail