I haven't had time to write a "proper" Captain's Log in a while, but a membership cancellation came across my inbox recently that got me thinking. Not because the person was rude. Quite the opposite, actually. The comment was thoughtful and honest. They said they were moving on to other technologies because Access felt outdated in the AI era.

The interesting thing is that I've been hearing versions of that argument more and more lately. Everywhere you look, it's AI this and web-based that. Every tech influencer on social media seems convinced that the future arrived sometime last Tuesday and anything you're using today should be buried in the backyard next to your Windows XP CDs and AOL trial disks. But I've noticed something over the years. New and obsolete are not the same thing.

Every generation of technology seems convinced it's witnessing the death of everything that came before it. Mainframes were supposed to disappear. They didn't. Desktop software was supposed to disappear. It didn't. The reality is that most technology never really dies. It just settles into the role it's best at. COBOL still runs banks. SQL databases still power enormous parts of the global economy. Email refuses to die no matter how many collaboration platforms come along. And Microsoft Access is still quietly running thousands upon thousands of businesses while everyone else is busy debating the latest AI buzzwords.

Even outside of technology, we see the same pattern. Ebooks didn't eliminate paper books. Streaming didn't eliminate movie theaters (although the Pandemic almost did). Online shopping didn't eliminate retail stores. Video meetings didn't eliminate business travel. The future usually doesn't replace the past. It absorbs it.

That's why I've always found the discussion around Microsoft Access a little amusing. Access isn't trendy. I'll grant that. Nobody's making flashy YouTube videos with titles like "Ten Reasons Microsoft Access Will Change Your Life!" Well, except maybe me. But just because something isn't fashionable doesn't mean it's no longer useful. In fact, useful is often the better measure.

If you need to build a practical business application quickly, Access is still one of the fastest tools I've ever used. Customer tracking systems, inventory databases, scheduling systems, quoting tools, reporting applications, workflow management, and countless other business solutions can be built in Access in a fraction of the time it would take in many other environments. That's not nostalgia talking. That's thirty years of experience talking.

What fascinates me most is how often people assume AI somehow changes this equation. AI is amazing technology. I use it every day. I've even started teaching lessons on connecting Access to ChatGPT because I think there's enormous potential there. But AI doesn't eliminate databases. AI uses databases.

Every AI system still depends on structured information. It still needs clean data. It still needs tables, relationships, business rules, validation, reporting, auditing, security, and workflows. If your data is a mess, AI won't magically fix it. It'll simply give you incorrect answers faster and with greater confidence. That's why I see AI not as a replacement for Access, but as an upgrade. AI can help write VBA code. It can generate SQL queries. It can classify records, summarize reports, clean data, and automate tasks that used to take hours. The database doesn't disappear. The database becomes more powerful.

The whole thing reminds me a little of Star Trek. Everyone remembers the Enterprise computer because crew members could talk to it in plain English and get intelligent answers back. What people don't think about is the enormous amount of information sitting underneath that interface. The Federation computer wasn't smart because it could talk. It was smart because it had access to massive amounts of organized data. Personnel files, technical manuals, scientific research, star charts, maintenance records, and operational procedures. Without the data, the computer is just a very expensive talking box. That's basically where AI is today.

So when someone tells me Access is outdated, I don't necessarily disagree. In some ways, it is. It's been around for decades. It's mature technology. But mature and obsolete are two completely different things. A hammer is old technology too. And when I need to drive a nail, I'm still reaching for the hammer.

What piece of technology do people keep calling obsolete that you still use every day?

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