In fairness to 320's point, we do get the bad with the good. The days of shade-tree mechanics fixing up their pollution-mobiles (in which the engines needed rebuilding as early as 50,000 miles) are long gone.
Same thing with the progress from a 1960 dial telephone owned by the phone company to today's latest infotainment/communication devices. Anyone smart enough to plug a cord into a socket could take an old phone apart and see if there were any loose or broken wires or if the bell were corroded.