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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! "
Gee willikers! Remember when cars looked like this?? Wacky! Or remember when the earth looked like this?!!? Times sure are a changin'!
Making you think you're crazy is a billion dollar industry.
A whole six items. *cough*
If you wanna get rich, you know that payback is a bitch
(It used to mean "that thing that you plug into the wall that lets you talk to other people far away", for you kids. Yes, outlets in the wall, at your home.)
I wonder how you'd explain todays über-gadgets to someone from the eighties. "This? Oh, it's my .. um, tricorder. Yeah, that's it."
The downside is that techology seems to be getting more unreliable, from a user perspective.
I'm on my third PS2 right now, but my Atari 2600 (still fun!) works like new...
Someone--I think it was Robert Kuttner but can't find the reference--was trying to explain the "paradox" that all of the economic figures seem good, yet polls consistently show U. S. citizens are pessimistic about the economic future.
His belief is that the problem is that the official inflation figures contain a mixture of prices for things like consumer electronics gadgets, which have continuously decreased in price, and things like healthcare costs and college tuition, which have continuously increased in price at far faster rate than "the" inflation rate.
The problem is that things like healthcare and education are much more important ultimately than cellular phones that can show video.
He said that we are turning into "a tchotchke society," rich in frivolous gadgets but poor in literacy rates, infant mortality, etc.
I love my iPod, but I'm worried about my medical insurance.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
Exactly. Try misplacing 25000 floppy disks.
Visit http://ringbreak.dnd.utwente.nl/~mrjb/growingbettersoftware to download your free copy of the book
Back then, when I pressed "record" on a tape recorder or the shutter button on a camera, it did what I wanted instantaneously.
None of this goddamn 2-second delay, or booting into the OS for 30 seconds to figure out how to record from the microphone.
Nowadays I am reluctant to buy any technology unless it does the basic things that technology used to do for me in the 1970s. There's no way I'd go back, of course, but I think one of the great failures of consumer electronics today is that much of it is incapable of basic features 30 years back---largely as a matter of priorities and crappy user interface design.
Xcott
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!