'You Had to Be There': As Technologies Change Ever Faster, the Knowledge of Obsolete Things Becomes Ever Sweeter (theatlantic.com)

Alexis C. Madrigal, writing for The Atlantic: There's a question going around on Twitter, courtesy of the writer Matt Whitlock: "Without revealing your actual age, what's something you remember that if you told a younger person they wouldn't understand?" This simple query has received, at this date, 18,000 responses. Here is just a tiny selection: A/S/L, pagers, manual car windows, "be kind, please rewind", "Waiting by the radio for my song to come on so I could record it on a cassette tape", floppy disks, the smell of purple mimeograph ink, WordPerfect, busy signals, paper maps, Winamp, smoking in the hospital, the card catalogue. Our favorite response, "The remote to change the channel on the TV was attached to a box that was attached to the TV", which elicited a response, "What about the remote that was really a clicker... In that it clicked like a frog toy",

Comments

Flying without passport?

[mi]

Technology my tail! What about things changed by our caring, loving, and omniscient government? When traveling — by air or train — without registering with authorities was possible? When being mistreated at the airport would cause the mistreater to be disciplined, rather than the victim — arrested?

When one could buy health insurance for about $140/month (just over $200 in today's money)? Remember?..

Re:Flying without passport?

[mi]

it started during the reign of G. W. Bush's idiot son.

Bush signed the law creating TSA, I'll grant you that. But it was meant to merely transfer airport security from private firms to government employees (a Fascist streak so common to all people in government).

Obama didn't do enough to roll it back.

Obama not only didn't roll it back, he presided over the Agency asserting a role much wider than imagined 10 years earlier. The agency smugly reminded us all, that it is in charge of all transportation — not merely by air. He didn't have to do it — no lawmakers were pressuring him into it. The agency is part of the Executive branch and reports to the President. Had it been merely an oversight on his part, they would've remained as were in 2007. No, he caused them to expand — either by giving them explicit instructions or simply by appointing an Authoritarian-minded head.

some cop could harass you for "acting suspiciously" or whatever, but this isn't common.

Such harassment could happen, and it does happen. But it is illegal — and outrageous. Amtrak et al demanding papers is perfectly legal and commonly accepted as necessary "to keep us safe". That's the feature of the past, that I lament passing... Unlike payphones and tape-recorders.

Re:first

[gnick]

Winamp really whips the llama's ass. I'll be using it until it stops doing its job.

Re:What's going on here?

[Kjella]

Oh crap, it just hit me, are we all about to die?

On a geological time scale, we're all about to die momentarily.

What I Miss Most? Life Before The Internet Age

[Tempest_2084]

It sounds stupid, but sometimes I honestly miss being bored. When you got bored you got creative to keep yourself entertained. That sort of creativity by necessity has died with the rise of the Internet and 24x7 continual entertainment. Kids growing up today will never know that sort of creativity.

I also miss being able to go completely off the grid. If you wanted to get away from everything (and everyone) you actually could. Now days there's really no easy way to do that. You're always under surveillance and you're always tethered to 'the system' somehow (your phone, your credit cards, etc.).

The last thing I really miss is having conversations with random people. Yeah that seems strange to say, but 'Back in the day' when you were waiting in a line or at a bus stop or something, you'd generally make friendly conversation with the person next to you, if just to pass the time. Today no one actually talks to each other anymore, everyone has their face down in a phone (I'm guilty of it myself) or have their headphones on. We're losing the art of human interaction. Hell, I've been with a group of friends who were actually texting each other rather than talking even though we were all right there. It was both eye opening and sad. Those days are gone I suppose.

Re:It's official....

[DontBeAMoran]

Slashdot has become Facebook.

I can't count the number of times I've seen this question/meme on my FB newsfeed.

And yes, I can count, I was a math major waaaay back when before I became a CS major.

It's not Facebook or anything in particular.

South Park sort of nailed it on the head with their Memberberries episodes.

There's been a huge wave of nostalgia going on in the last few years. Remakes, reboots, alternate universe settings, etc.

We got remakes, reboots or sequels for Star Wars, Blade Runner, Jurassic Park, Jumanji, etc.
We got classic videogame consoles from Nintendo and others.

I think Agent Smith was sort of telling the truth in The Matrix when he said the peak of human evolution was around the mid 1990's.

After that, we had businesses, marketing and governments take over everything, so everything is depressing and sucks, thus the urge to recall the "simpler modern times" is very strong... and businesses are marketing the hell out of it while the government is making notes of who's eating memberberries.

Re:Atari 2600 Expert Here

[AutodidactLabrat]

I remember that too
How only the "winners" got to make decisions, and the working stiffs who got things done only earned a decent wage if some of them had DIED standing up to those "winners"