“Oh, bless their souls, they’re using dial-up!” I exclaim as I watch You’ve Got Mail, but if we really put this into perspective, our generation has experienced a rapid change in the technology we use in our daily lives in the last two decades. This is a bit of an ambitious blog, so please don’t get huffy if I miss anything.

Home Entertainment

Remember that old TV that was this huge heavy cube that took up a good square meter of space in your living room? No? Or did you just not want to remember the days when your TV would be all static when your neighbor had their cable re-hooked or modified. Or the days when your cable line went into your VCR and another cable connected the VCR to the TV? Back then, the debate was on which cable packages you wanted and now? Plasma vs. LCD and/or digital cable box vs. satellite. Oh yes, do I have to mention that your TV is probably flat and barely takes up any space, especially if it’s mounted on the wall?

As for the shows you missed, remember the days when you had to program your VCR to record that precious episode on a dinky little antique called a VHS tape so you could rewatch your episode of the X-files in horrible quality? Well, those days are gone with the advent of Youtube, on-demand television and did I mention Youtube? As for Mr. VHS, well, I’m sorry but you’re getting replaced by the lovely and sleek DVDs and Blu-Ray discs. Just a week ago, my friend didn’t bring a movie she owned to movie night at my house because she didn’t know whether or not I had a VHS player.

Music Players

My dad used to play all sorts of records on his turntable when I was a kid. He would never let me touch it because he thought I’d break the vinyl records or the record player. This is why the turntable is buried somewhere in the attic and if I ever wanted to use it, I’d have to get a friend to show me how to work the machine.

I also remember back in my childhood when I won a school-wide competition in music bingo in grade 5 or 6. I won a cassette tape recording of the original Canadian cast of the Phantom of the Opera. I played it over and over and over again for months until my parents got fed up with it. I also remember having to turn the cassette over to side B after “All I Ask of You” so I could listen to the rest of the tape. Then there were the annoying times when I had to rewind the tape to the right place so I could listen to a song again. Well, by middle school, CDs had taken over and everything was much easier, except you had to change CDs whenever you wanted to listen to another artist or album.

Then, the iPod and mp3 players came and life was never the same after that. CDs? Sure, they’re nice to have but it’s cheaper to just download songs off the Internet (even though it’s kind of really illegal). Home music players? Well, my lovely iPod docking station is small and can play my iPod, the radio and basically any other music device such as portable Walkmans and CD players. By the way, has anyone seen the new iPod nano ad? It can take videos!

Cellphones

Remember in old movies when people had the very first cell phones? We would laugh because those things were huge! Nowadays, they fit in the palm of your hand. Then, there’s the fact that you have a pretty little LCD screen and if your plan allows it, you could text, e-mail, send pictures, store information and videos, surf the internet and take pictures on the little device that is your cell phone. I could go on with all the amazing things you can do if you had an iPhone, but I have so much more to write about.

Oh yes, and the little Blackberry. Back in my childhood, I figured that you deserved some sort of respect if you had a Blackberry. They were little palm pilot-like things used only by rich lawyers and businesspeople. Now, just about anyone could get one – for free if you get the right data/cellphone plan.

Computers and the Internet

As I’m typing this blog entry on my laptop, I’m taking a trip down Nostalgia Crescent and into the depths of my elementary school memories. Assignments could be handed in typed or written in cursive in blue or black pen because in grade 5, not all kids had a computer. Research was done mainly at the library and you looked up a book by going through a huge drawer of file cards.

I got my first computer in grade 5. It was a dinky little HP computer and I loved going on the internet, except my parents imposed a 1 hour time limit on the amount of time I was able to spend on it. The reason? We had dial-up, meaning we had to wait a minute to listen to beeping and static as your computer connected to the internet, it was slow and oh yes, you couldn’t use your phone when you were connected.

What did I do on the internet? Well, I mostly played games – Neopets was all the craze back then and… I played games. Yes, people, that was life before Facebook, Youtube, Twitter and blogUT.

As for laptops? They were expensive, bulky and heavy. You could carry them around so you would have Microsoft word and whatnot, but routers and WiFi are rather recent inventions. No one really had laptops and nowadays, everyone has one. In a few years, desktops might be a thing of the past. As for the weight and size of my laptop’s ancestors – pretty much gone. Just take a look at the MacBook Air. My backpack in highschool on a weekday probably weighed more than my laptop.

My supervisor at one of my old jobs was cleaning out her office and she found this 8×8 inch flat thing. She asked if I knew what it was. I replied with a negative. It was an old floppy disk. By then, USBs were still really new and were kind of expensive, so I was using a 3 and 1/2 inch floppy disk at home and at school. I hated those things. They always slowed down your computer and every disk managed to be useless after 5 uses because some sort of error would crop up. Thank goodness they stopped making them. By the way, to all the laptop users out there, if you have a mouse connected to your computer, do you realize that back in the day, your mouse wasn’t connected to your computer via the USB port but by another port that was round?

As for your printer and scanner, they used to be two different big and bulky devices. Nowadays, you can get a machine that’s a printer, scanner, photocopier and fax machine all in one. If you’re still using a desktop, I wonder if your monitor is thicker than your average textbook. For most of you, I bet it isn’t.

Photography

Taking photos with a film camera used to have an element of surprise. You can take all these pictures, but you didn’t know what they looked like until they were developed. Surprise! There was a cute dog in background of that shot of your little cousin in the park. Darn! I blinked in this picture. No matter how good or bad the picture, most likely you had a hard copy of them along with these little strips of film you’re likely to lose if you’re a disorganized person. (Points to myself.)

Taking pictures with a film camera was an altogether different experience. If you had 1 roll of film with 24 exposures, you’d be sure to take pictures of the most important things. With a digital camera with a 16G memory card on the other hand? Snap away without restraint. If you don’t like the pictures, you can delete them and make room to take more.

Movies

I admit, I have never watched an entire black and white film until last year in my cinema class. I never bothered watching B&W films on TV and I’m sure kids nowadays wonder why people would even bother watching those movies. I mean, today we have movies… in 3-D. Pretty cool, although B&W movies still have their charm. Especially if the director is Akira Kurosawa.

Video Games

My parents never let me play video games and although I do own a very outdated PS2, the only game I own is DDR. But, being friends with the boys in my class, I remember those chunky gray Nintendo Game boys and the slightly more contemporary Nintendo DS on which I played Mario Kart with my French exchange partner and her sisters. I apologize for not know too much about the older gaming systems, but I know for sure that none of them were like Wii that’s so popular that even my technologically challenged mother wants one.

Anyways, I that’s all for now. I can just see someone reading this blog a few months from now and saying, “Geez, that ‘new’ thing she’s talking about it soooooo outdated.”

Pictures from here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 6th, 2010 at 7:00 am and is filed under General, Music, Photography, Whimsical. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.