Obsolescence

Fun article about stuff that our kids will probably never encounter:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/8117619.stm

A few of my favorites:

1. Inserting a VHS tape into a VCR to watch a movie or to record something.

I still do this. What's DVR?

6. Rotary dial televisions with no remote control. You know, the ones where the kids were the remote control.

Up until a few years ago, Shan and I were still using the TV I got for a birthday present when I was about 11. Sometimes it would lose focus and you had to bump the knob to get the picture back.

17. That there was a time before ‘reality TV.’

When is this going to go away? I'm even more jaded after the Jon and Kate drama . . .

19. The scream of a modem connecting.

Do you remember that awful, awful noise that modems made? As a nun once said, "it sounds like the moaning of the Damned in Hell!"

30. Blowing the dust out of a NES cartridge in the hopes that it’ll load this time.

I don't know how many hours of my life were wasted loading, removing, blowing, inserting, loading . . .

37. Finding out information from an encyclopedia.

I still remember when my parents took me to an auction (I was about 8 or so) so we could bid on an old, old set of Encyclopedias. They still have them; I think they date from the 50s.

Think about this now; you can go to wikipedia.org and find info on nearly any obscure item you can think of in about 10 seconds . . . and it's always right.

63. Rotary-dial telephones.

Yep, we had one of these when I was a kid.

66. Pay phones.

Heck, these are almost all gone already. Last summer, I was in Chicago at a conference and I searched the whole campus for a payphone so I could call my family. None to be found anywhere. And no, it still didn't make me pine for a cell phone.

77. Relying on the 5-minute sport segment on the nightly news for baseball highlights.

How life-changing was cable and the ubiquity of ESPN? Now, you can watch sports all day and night on multiple channels if you so choose.

86. Finding books in a card catalog at the library.

Wow, what a time suck that was. Think of all the time librarians spent putting cards in for the author, title, subject . . . all for one book!

87. Swimming pools with diving boards.

I don't understand this one . . . why would they go away?

97. Spending your entire allowance at the arcade in the mall.

Mortal Kombat, anyone?