28 years ago, on a cold January Saturday, I dragged my family out to an audio dealer at the Auburn Mall to replace a pair of AKG K240 headphones that had become almost unusable after about a dozen years. Tonight, after buying an adapter that would allow me to use them with my smaller-profile devices, I dusted off those replacement headphones to put them on, and discovered that the left channel was dead. I was shocked. For the first time in 40 years, I do not own a set of working K240s. The world as I’ve known it is falling apart!! As the artifacts of my personal history continue to land in the junk pile, I can’t help but feel somewhat disoriented. Why should I care? I do have a very nice-sounding pair of wireless JBL headphones now… But why do I suspect those will last no longer than five years?