Ten things your kid will never see
As technology races forward it’s inevitable that once common sights are relegated to the history books. Here are ten examples of nostalgia that today’s kids will never see.
Tube Television Turning Off
Televisions weren't always sleek and thin, as many of us know there were times where TV's were deeper than they were wide sporting faux wooden frames that dwarfed the actual picture size. When one mustered the strength to turn the dial or press the button which turned the set off, its Cathode Ray Tube (CRT) design would treat the viewer to a wonderful dying robot sound, a sparse crackle of static electricity and the sight of the picture reducing to a pin-prick, or on some sets, a line of bright white light. If any part of the television viewing experience was damaging one's eyesight it was almost certainly watching one's favourite show compress black hole-like into that retina burning singularity. Today's youth enjoy larger screens with sharper pictures and slimmer profiles and while they might see a desk-sized television on the curb their eyes will never suffer the joys of the curious bi-product light show their parents got to know so well. Image courtesy flickr.com/loqueveelojo
Missed a really big one when he forgot to include the rotary dial phone. Last summer we saw a kid in a junk shop pick one up, repeatedly poke his finger in one of the holes, and then turn to his dad and say ‘the buttons are stuck’!
There Is No Longer A Word ” Cassette ” In Oxford’s Dictionary, Another Thing They Won’t Be Able To Read….LOL
Remember the time when we could leave comments on a website or acces and download files without having to REGISTER and remember many ID’s and passwords ?
Or dialing on a old rotary dial phone before touch-tone ?
Using you 23 channels CB in a truck ?
Having to freeze your butt because remote car starter did not exist ?
Wait in line at the bank that close at 2pm to deposit your work check ?
Having to have the exact change to pay the bus ?
When movies in theatre where about $3.00 and gas price was $0.49/liter ?
Your old tape answering machine or sony beta vcr ?
Even your B/W television set ?
300/1200/2400 bps phone modem on serial ports ? no internet yet, only BBS ?
Booting your atari 800xl computer or commodore 64 was instantly ?
Remember the time before computer viruses ?
8 track player ?
33 rpm vinyl records ?
Finally, the old big-ben clock you had to crank every night…
tic-tac-tic-tac-drrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrring…..
Same sound goes for the old bells in old phones….
Gee, I feel old suddenly… !?!?!?!?!
I was born in the late ’80s (and am, therefore, probably younger than most of you), but do briefly remember most of these. The tiny, microwave-sized TV set, and the neat noises it made when Mom and Dad turned it off… Oh, man! Those were the days! I even still have ALL of the old VHS tapes we owned, in case they make a comeback (yeah, right).
Something not mentioned: my dad’s ancient Nintendo console. Grey, with massive disks, 260-in-one, and Mr. Mary (I guess they messed up Mario’s name on our copy).
Others worth noting, not mentioned in the article: cassette tapes, portable CD players, diskettes, Halloween Harry and Blake Stone (complete with 8-bit animations), non-digital cameras, and phones with cords (yay, spiral cords! Always earned me top marks in Annoying Dad 101). My boyfriend, who was born in ’73, probably knows even more- go, Commodore 64!
Everything is digitized now, and it has taken the humanity out of a lot of our interactions with others. Here’s to those of us who are tech-savvy but not dependent (and still literate).
Ok, I am responding before seeing other responses, so if someone beat me to this, I am sorry.
It is “by-product”, NOT “bi-product”, unless your TV swings both ways. I am getting really tired of “professional” articles that are full of spelling and grammar mistakes.
At the age of 18, I am familiar with 8/10 on this list, so they are not that old.
Every summer at work we have a bunch of summer students that come in to get work experience. I grew up during the 80′s and 90′s and pop culture references were so fluent during that time, I still make regular references to movies like Back to the Future and Star Wars, or TV shows like the first few seasons of the Simpsons or by mere habit and these kids have no idea what I’m talking about.
It’s funny to realize you are slowly turning into that outdated person we always laughed at our parents for being. But oh how I remember the neon sweatshirts, pagers the size of a blu-ray case, seeing car phone on tv and thinking: “Why would you want to talk on the phone in your car? That’s so pointless!”. The giant wooden tv cabinets with luxurious 20″ screens and the finicky beta max we used to tape episodes of the Arsenio Hall show so we could catch a glimpse of a favorite stars. Playing the same 10 VHS tapes we considered ourselves rather savvy to have obtained used from the local rental store when their popularity died until the pictures became riddled with fuzzy lines (which is why we can still quote them so fluidly). And one of my favorites: Buying my brothers Gameboy from him for $15 (when he upgraded to the magical full colour Sega Game Gear) and spending my entire allowance buying the multiple batteries (6 AA’s, plus 2 more for the light attachment, replaced every 2 hrs of game play) so I could stay up late playing Tetris under the covers until my mom caught me.
Ahhhh, I could go on forever, I had one heck of a fun childhood!
What about floppy discs?
With the epidemic child obesity levels now another thing your kids will never see is their own penises and vaginas.
pic 9 says that cords are outdated. I personally prefer Ethernet to WiFi-much faster
[...] a look at other examples of forever-evolving technology, check out Phil Tucker’s photo gallery, Ten things your kid will never see, where he highlights things like analog snow, computer paper, long spiral cords, and yes, even [...]