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Gadgets, Then & Now
An anonymous reader writes in to tell us about "A funny article about gadgets from the 70's & 80's compared to gadgets of today. Amazing that you can fit 25,000 5 1/4 diskettes on one 8GB compact flash, and phones weighed 11.5 pounds! "
If you look especially how much a lot of stuff like phones and computers have shrunk in the last 20 years while increasing capacity, it's enough to make you believe that powerful, wearable and unobtrusive computers etc will be common within say 15 years.
You can buy such today, however being small isn't always good, and that'a a huge obstacle to small wearing gadgets. Now if we put direct nerve interface into the picture...
Virtual 24 inch flat screen and a virtual keyboard you can type on (or even just "think" about the letters if you will) will open the way to making the computers as small as technologicallypossible while retaining usability and universal use.
BTW something we lost from the early days of computing and gadgets is that I could hammer my Apple and monitor and it'll work just fine, while my modern TFT may pop a dead pixel just if I look it in a strange way.
Modern technology is somewhat less reliable, you really gotta go to the higher end to see reliable modern products.
Of course, someone might argue that 5 1/4 floppies weren't that reliable either (especially compared to modenr Flash memory cards).
I used floppies more than I'll ever use flash. I only used the big mobile phone for a few weekends as Dutyman, but it was more important than my cell is now. Everything else is just cosmetic. My old 8088 PC pretty much does what my current one does.
The big difference is the WWW, especially search engines. I used to spend lots of time in libraries and with the Yellow Pages.
This has been happening for a while. How about the techonolical changes from 1940 to 1970?
Nostalgia is good, only to see how good we have it now and how much we have screwed it up.
A much better source for this kind of stuff is the Retrothing Blog. Definitely a favorite of my RSS feed list.
The economic figures only look good to extreme casual observers because they keep removing important indices from the consumer price indicies. Examples are food and fuel costs, they no longer count for some reason, yet they used to use them. Uhh, seems like those are some important necessary bills there.. Another one - 30 years ago (around then) housing costs were considered expensive once you cracked 25% of your net for the mortgage, now it is 50%. Car loans were 12 months or tops 18 months, now they are 60 months. House notes were ten or at most twenty years, now thirty is common and we have the "no prinicple, interest only" loans as well(IE, never ever paid off, you have the illusion of buying when you are just another class of perpetual renter). That's *severely* downhill. Unemployment stats are another way they make things look rosy "we added 100,000 jobs this quarter!", They sort of neglect to mention that the previous quarter they lost over 100,000 well paying jobs in wealth-creation (such as manufacturing) with bennies and replaced them with half price lower paying jobs in the "service" wealth re-arranging economy with little to no bennies.
They keep changing the parameters on what is considered "good". US household debt is now 11 trillion dollars. This is considered "good" now when obviously it isn't, what would be "good" is everything paid off, zero debt, and 11 trillion in savings.
It's going to get worse, there is a big major move to start moving away from the petrodollar to the petroeuro in international oil prices, in fact, I will posit that is the main reason we invaded Iraq, saddam was a notorious bad guy for decades, this was nothing new. We invaded VERY shortly after he switched his oil sales to euros.
Iran is now less than two months away from their oil bourse denominated in euros. It has taken them awhile to get their ducks in a row with it, but it keeps moving ahead slowly. they sell a LOT of oil around the planet. Even if we invade based on those nuke claims, and the oil production gets wiped out, we could EASILY see 200 buck a barrel oilo. think that won't hurt the global economy? there is NO replacement for that volume of oil on the planet, none, nothing that could be brought online within even two or three years. China is now doing direct swaps, manufactured technology and engineering expertise for energy, eliminating most of any sort of "cash" involved, and their demand is projected to be equal to todays global demand within ten years.
Now, someone explain why they would want to have to be forced to go through a severe skim by using dollars again for that? They could use their accumulated dollars elsewhere, buying up more extreme high tech, they don't need it just to buy crude or natural gas, not much anyway. And why would europeans want to be forced to use dollars instead of euros for imported energy? Eliminating the middleman skim there with petrodollars results in HUGE savings for them, and energy costs just keep going through the roof,much faster than any other inflationary pressures and dwarfing average wage increases. So let us apply occams razor to the future a little with the US economy. It is being "second worlded" as fast as the pirate globalists can pull it off, and that has been their plan all along. The only reason they didn't do it all at once was to try and avoid a revolutionary backlash,(especially in the US where anti fascist "tools" are still in common ownership) as in an actual physical revolution. They have to do the nice and easy continual rearrangment combined with the mass brainwashing that the thousand cuts are all neglibile. And they want the US second worlded because that is the society they want, full high tech, but basically only two classes of humans, a big global plutocracy. We are right now in the mass switch to the illusion of voting with blackbox voting. We already passed the illusion of major political party differences once you cut through the soundbites and see what actually happens. Here's a good example how they pl
no chicks want big vaginas.
technology when first introduced is seen as obscene - an abomination - and is untrusted. So once introduced - the race is on for tech to become as seamless and unobtrusive as possible. Hence, silent, small, easily coordinated, etc. The ideal condition is technology that doesn't look like tech at all.
big cars? not necessarily. most expensive.
big houses? again - not necessarily. donald trump sells apts for $30 million here in ny. 1500 square feet.
consensus is the issue. it's what everyone agrees to.
for example, I work in media - and most in media are gay. so amongst gay men, the ideal condition for the phallus is not large at all as that presents problems in regards to what they like to do with the phallus.
women like large phalluses, but in general - they like the idea of "taming" one and having possession of it more than actually having sex with one. I know... my dick is 9 1/2 inches long. they love looking at it and stuff - but they hate sex. which then puts me in a tough position. Most will confess after sex that while women love to look at big dongs - there is a sweet spot as far as size is concerned. It's 6 inches to 8 inches - where it feels good and is big enough to be felt but small enough to not destroy tissue.
And if You'll remember back in the days, progress meant "better, faster, stronger, superior." Let's take a comparison of the Ford Model T or Model A, and compare to a Ford Ranger or Taurus (Yes I mentioned a truck in a list of general cars, you'll soon find otu why.) Both the model T and model As were lighter, less powerful, did their job, and because of them, new laws that made no sense were introduced. (A man must walk ahead of a driving lady with a lantern to signal she was coming) as cars got faster and more dangerous, we had the laws of speed limits introduced (NOT a bad thing, guaranteed, but still...) and eventually we had laws for more standards (when most of the problems being caused generally were at the fault of the people not doing the one thing they should do - learn about their property, what it does, how it does it, and any possible problems that may be encountered in the usage of the product.) In my opinion, no matter how far we achieve progress, an equal amount of regression is created that directly counteracts the point of progression. In the USA - we create progressive new technology (stem-cell research, more efficient internal combustion engines, new progress considering the 100x more positive uses of marijuana and homoepathy) and we get regressive, restrictive, draconian laws for things like that that actually limit our potential to benefit and prosper from these new technologies. Vinyl>casette>CD>DVD>MP3 is probably the best example I can provide of sugh laws coming into effect for new technologies. Instea of it being used for the best - it's labeled as the worst and laws are put into place to restrict it's usage. What a contradictory and paradoxical world we live in...
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
Always be suspicious when there's more google ads than information.
5" floppies? Bah, those were for children. Real men used 8" floppies. They worked. The 5" ones were always flakey.
The first videogame machine I bought was Pong. $300. Sound retarded? Yeah I thought so too. I took it back 2 days later for a refund.
I didn't know anybody with an 8-track car player. They were as stupid then as they seem now. Lots of people has casette decks though which really only became obsolete in fairly recent memory.
The price of things was fairly different. My first decent color monitor did 800x600 and cost $3500 1984 dollars. Yesterday I bought a nearly new 21" Sony 2000xwhatever for $2 in Sally Ann.
Gas was forty four cents a gallon the first time I filled up my $700 two year old Italian sportscar.
Nobody had a portable phone back then. Everybody has a pulse rotary phone. Here in Canada we still pay $2/mo on our phone bill for "pushbutton" service.
Acoustic couplers (300 baud) vs. DSL modems would have been good to include.
A carbon dioxide laser was millions of dollars and 30 feet long. Now they're $1000 on flea-bay and fit in a briefcase.
Tha cancer cure rate hasn't changed since the 60s. We can detect it earlier. Actually that's also true if you compare it to 1902.
SCO were assholes for as long as they've been around. So was Bill Gates. And Woz.
A Hasselblad was then and is still the best camera.
Back then you could get stuff repaired. Timex in the 50's invented the "it's cheaper to give you a new one than even look at the defective POS we sold you" philosophy.
Kids grew long hair to rebel. Now they cut their arms.
We lived in fear of nuclear war and flu pandemic. Just like today.
I can't find most of my flashcards. My old flexible diskettes still work amazingly. I have several broken digital cameras. My Canon AE1 still works.
You can buy today, a working, drivable diesel Mercedes for the price of changing the spark plugs on a new gas one.
Popular science was more science and less popular back then. And had a helluva lot more pages.
The price of a neon tetra hasn't changed in 30 years. An S class Mercedes cost 20X what it did 30 years ago. But it's the same price adjusted for inflation.
Windows was a bad idea in the 80's. It's worse now. Unix was cool in the 70's and actually worked.
I really think if somebody had slept for 30 years and woken up today it would take them about 10 minutyes to catch up. And then they'd say "this is IT?!?"
Need Mercedes parts ?
You've obviously never used anything powered by a set of vacuum tubes. A Tube-Powered TV used to take several minutes to "warm up".
Likewise, I'll agree that modern digital cameras do suck in terms of delays, but this is actually a necessity of the feature that allows you to see the live preview. Get rid of the live preview, and you get near-instantaneous shutter-releases. The same obviously applies to all DSLRs as well -- a modern DSLR can easily surpass old old film SLRs in terms of frames per second, simply because there's no film to advance.
-- If you try to fail and succeed, which have you done? - Uli's moose
* Atari 2600
* Home version of Pac Man arcade machine
* TRS-80 Color Computer 2 with thermal printer and a tape cassette drive
* Cassette taping my favorite TV shows, bet the MPAA and RIAA would have been after my arse for audio recording Night Rider, MASH, and Tales of the Golden Monkey on cassette as a kid. Also had a sore arm from holding the casette recorder to the TV speaker. >_>
* First remote controlled 4-wheel drive truck. I promptly tore that open and cut all the wires to try and figure out how it worked. Never saw anything remote controlled again after my father came home and I had a sore arse.
* Merline game, the red phone like thing.
* That Dungeons and Dragons game where you had these little metal figures on an electronic game board and as you moved the dragon moved towards you and you placed wall blocks to where you bumped in to walls.
You know, the more I think about this stuff the more I remembered an old dream and I think I just realized what that dream symbolized. Walks down memory lane can be fun and enlightening.
~~ Behold the flying cow with a rail gun! ~~
I think it involves trying to get all the money you can. In one of the games, you need to impress a fiancee and need as much money as possible.
In either case, it's a game that requires creating a very big map - especially since it branches and has airports that bring you from one area to another.
In Impossible Mission, searching lockers sometimes gives you a picture of some sort - there are 36 pictures in total. The objective is to take these pictures and place them one-atop-another to create a solid rectangle - up to 9 in total. Obtaining and orienting each rectangle in the correct direction gives you 1 code letter. You may sometimes need lift resets and
For reference, you have six hours to complete the game. Getting killed takes 10 minutes. Using the phone hint system costs a couple of minutes. Note that the C64 versions that are commonly available have a major bug - if a robot shoots off the left side of the screen, you die. Naturally, this results in an insta-kill in some layouts.
Impossible Mission II is similar - although the objective is to collect 6 our of 8 tapes from the building subsections. However, you need to find code numbers to leave a subsection of a building.
...PCs today still ship with floppy drives. I know people who will tell me, with a straight face no less, that there are times that having a 3.5 floppy drive is handy.
Maybe because they DO come in handy every once and a while? Though I do admit, I very rarely use the floppy drive on my home machine.
I already know some of you will just think I'm an old fart fondly remembering a simpler time and confuse it for a better time but that really isn't what I'm trying to do here.
I liked the styling risks that some companies took back then. I get the sense that it was easier to take risks with consumer products back then.
My favorite car radio of all times was the Sanyo Tachard radio. It was shaped like a tachometer and locked with a key so that you could remove it. There were a couple of different models, I think one was 8 watts and the other was 32 watts. For the day, the sound quality was excellent and it made the inside of my Fiat 850 Spyder look almost space age.
RCA made a bedroom stereo that looked like an astronaut's helmet! When you lifted the face shield, the eyes were the controls, the nose the frequency dial, and the mouth was the eight-track deck.
Initial technology was always interesting too:
The VIC-20 from Comodore was an exceptional started computer that didn't cost an arm and a leg. It ran a form of basic that was fun to learn and use. It really was a toy and could be used to play games.
The Sinclair ZX-80 was an ultimate cheap computer. In many ways it was terrible (especially the keyboard) but it represented a starting point for so many inventive people to perform exparaments and modifications that I have to say it did a lot for the hobby computer industry and probably launched more people into computer related careers than anything else ever has.
Sometimes what was right and what was commercially successful were in two different worlds.
The eight-track won out over the cassette at first, despite the fact that it was more complex and lower quality. It litterally took a decade for people to wake up!
Sony Betamax was hands down better than VHS. It was visibly superior and actually less complex.
Communications technology was always a big deal.
My grandfather was a big baseball fan. For Christmas one year he was given a transistor AM radio with one of those really lousy ear-pieces. From April through October it was almost welded to his ear. It was that big a part of his life, I would even call it a life-changing thing for him. He no longer had to miss the game no matter where he went.
My friend was the first on the block to get color TV. I was so jealous! One night we watched a cop show on his TV and the flashing lights were blue - which made no sense to me because where I was from all cop cars, fire trucks, and ambulances had red lights. It really confused me.
My hometown was fairly small and dial phone technology came late. I was able to pick up the phone and tell Sarah, the operator that I wanted to talk to my mom and she would actually track her down or if she couldn't she would offer to call one of my grandparents for me! This is one place where technology may actually have been a hinderance for small towns. Today, the operator is likely in a different time-zone and has no knowlege of your town.
My dad was a volinteer fireman and we had a "fire phone" in our home for years. If the phone rang steady, you picked up the phone and listened and you would hear the actual person reporting the fire or, in the event of a "second alarm" or "mutual aid" call a dispatcher. Us kids were taught to always listen if dad was home or to try to ignore the call if he wasn't (we always listened). Most of the cafes and bars in town were also wired into the fire phone system so that they could pass the word to their fire-fighting customers. I think today's system is far superior to the old solution but not nearly as much fun.
My '64 Buick had a speed buzzer and auto-dimming headlights. Features I loved. I would almost rather have the buzzer than cruise control today. I really wish my truck had auto-dimming headlights. I am really glad that it corners better and stops faster than my '64 Buick did though. Believe it or not, my 2000 Dodge 5.2L RAM gets about the same MPG as my '64 Buick did and, the '64 Buick had a 401 CID "Wildcat 445" engine and a 4bbl carb!
Believe it or not, a Model T Ford did about the same MPG as an average modern car. Sure, it wasn't os fuel-efficient as today's engines, but then again there were no windscreen wipers, no radio, no aircon, no ..... :) Same MPG, makes one think.
"Good news, everyone!"