Artifact functions also explain when an artifact has become obsolete. Take the typewriter. In the 1950s, its normative proper function was to produce typed documents. This effect constituted a good, and strongest, reason why it ought to be the case that people had access to typewriters. However, today computers and printers constitute alternatives that offer greater efficiency and additional functionalities, e.g., editing. To see what this means for the normative function of the typewriter, we should clarify the distinction between the effect which is an artifact’s normative function and the explanation of why this effect is a reason for the artifact’s existence.
In the 1950s, the fact that typewriters produced typed documents was a reason why artifacts with typewriter features ought to exist, as this was highly valuable for a variety of reasons. In the face of more efficient alternatives, the typewriter is no longer as useful to produce that effect, though. Instead, what made producing documents a reason why the typewriter ought to exist in the 1950s now makes producing documents a reason why computers and printers ought to exist. In this sense, we can say that typewriters are obsolete – there is something else that fills the role that it used to have much better, making it so that this role no longer can ground the effect as a normative function of the artifact.
However, this does not mean that producing documents is no longer a normative function of type-writers and, maybe, even their normative proper function. It’s just that what explains that this effect is a reason for the existence of type-writers has changed. In modern times, insofar as producing written documents is a reason why artifacts with type-writer features ought to exist, this is so for the particular aesthetic qualities of such documents, or how the fact that they are embedded in a certain tradition creates a certain experience while writing.