Things that are out of date....Some are still ok by me.

So, on Yahoo.com I opened up my home page to see this story.  I wanted to repost it here so I could discuss some of this stuff.  The article is from Wired.com written by Nathan Barry.  The article is about how some things from the past are either already out of date or soon will be.  It's a trip down memory lane for me in some cases, others I have no experience with at all. 

I've also somehow lost my normal font and I can't find it, so this is all way out of whack.  I will try to fix that in the future.  The article part is in red and my comments (hopefully) will show up in black.

Audio-Visual Entertainment

1. Inserting a VHS tape into a VCR to watch a movie or to record something.  This I did all the time and I don't miss at all when the tapes got stuck in there and you ruined the whole tape and possibly your VCR.
2. Super-8 movies and cine film of all kinds.
3. Playing music on an audio tape using a personal stereo.  Hell yeah.  Made mixed tapes all the time!
4. The number of TV channels being a single digit. I remember it being a massive event when Britain got its fourth channel.  When I was growing up, I went to the tv often to change the dial.  I remember we had channels: 3, 5, 8, 10, 12, 15, 21, 22, and that was it.  21 and 22 were religious channels so they didn't count anyway and the Hispanic channels were in there somewhere too?  Maybe 34?
5. Standard-definition, CRT TVs filling up half your living room.  For a long time we had a huge tv with a wooden frame finish around the screen.  But in the late 80's we got a Zenith that fit into a corner.  It was a very big deal, saving a lot of space, and it was plastic, not wood encased. 
6. Rotary dial televisions with no remote control. You know, the ones where the kids were the remote control.  I was the remote, I remember that....getting up all the time.  I think we should go back to this one, unless you're sick or injured too many Americans need to get their butt off the couch more often.
7. High-speed dubbing.
8. 8-track cartridges.  I remember my uncle having a TON of these, but I never did. 
9. Vinyl records. Even today’s DJs are going laptop or CD.  Of course, these were going out of fashion when I was little so I only owned 1 that I had won off a contest. 
10. Betamax tapes.
11. MiniDisc.  Yeah, I had a minidisc player while I was in college.  I also won that in a raffle, so at least I didn't buy it.
12. Laserdisc: the LP of DVD.  My uncle again, had a lot of these. 
13. Scanning the radio dial and hearing static between stations.  I still have radios that I can do this on, so I'm not sure why it's listed here.
14. Shortwave radio.
15. 3-D movies meaning red-and-green glasses.  I was so excited if a commercial, tv show, or movie came out on tv where you got to use those glasses!
16. Watching TV when the networks say you should. Tivo and Sky+ are slowing killing this one.  This has been dead a while, I used to tape my shows back in the early 90's so it's really no different now.  Just a different medium. 
17. That there was a time before ‘reality TV.’  Thank God!  Those were the good old days for me.  Most of the "reality" tv stuff today is absolute crap I wish I could take off the air.
18. I really have to add one of my own here - The days where MTV and VH1 used to show actual music videos all day and night long.  If they had a show - it was to countdown the most popular music video's of the week.  I miss that. 

Computers and Videogaming

19. Wires. OK, so they’re not gone yet, but it won’t be long.  I'm not sure about this one at all. 
20. The scream of a modem connecting.
21. The buzz of a dot-matrix printer.
22. 5- and 3-inch floppies, Zip Discs and countless other forms of data storage.
23. Using jumpers to set IRQs.  Don't have any idea what this means.
24. DOS.
25. Terminals accessing the mainframe.
26. Screens being just green (or orange) on black.  Yes, remember those days well.
27. Tweaking the volume setting on your tape deck to get a computer game to load, and waiting ages for it to actually do it.  Don't know this one.
28. Daisy chaining your SCSI devices and making sure they’ve all got a different ID.  Huh?
29. Counting in kilobytes.
30. Wondering if you can afford to buy a RAM upgrade.
31. Blowing the dust out of a NES cartridge in the hopes that it’ll load this time.  I haven't thought of doing this in years!  Thanks for reminding me! 
32. Turning a PlayStation on its end to try and get a game to load.
33. Joysticks.  Miss them!
34. Having to delete something to make room on your hard drive.
35. Booting your computer off of a floppy disk.
36. Recording a song in a studio.  I think they still do this a lot in the industry don't they? 

The Internet

37. NCSA Mosaic.
38. Finding out information from an encyclopedia.
39. Using a road atlas to get from A to B.
40. Doing bank business only when the bank is open.
41. Shopping only during the day, Monday to Saturday.  One of my favorite things to do on the internet is to shop, but it doesn't beat doing it the old fashion way at the mall. 
42. Phone books and Yellow Pages.  I'm glad these are gone.  Killing too many trees for those.
43. Newspapers and magazines made from dead trees.  I still appreciate a good newspaper though. 
44. Actually being able to get a domain name consisting of real words.
45. Filling out an order form by hand, putting it in an envelope and posting it.
46. Not knowing exactly what all of your friends are doing and thinking at every moment.  I'm still not on Twitter or Facebook so this is still how I function everyday. 
47. Carrying on a correspondence with real letters, especially the handwritten kind.  I definitely miss this one, especially when it's a letter from a sweetheart.  Nothing beats that.
48. Archie searches.  No idea what this means?  The funnies in a newspaper maybe?
49. Gopher searches.  Again, no idea?
50. Concatenating and UUDecoding binaries from Usenet.
51. Privacy.  This is partly why I don't use Twitter and Facebook.
52. The fact that words generally don’t have num8er5 in them.  Yeah, this trend bothers me outside of text messages. 
53. Correct spelling of phrases, rather than TLAs.  What's a TLA?  An abbreviation I'm guessing?
54. Waiting several minutes (or even hours!) to download something.  Still waiting minutes to download stuff. 
55. The time before botnets/security vulnerabilities due to always-on and always-connected PCs.
56. The time before PC networks.
57. When Spam was just a meat product — or even a Monty Python sketch.  Spam meat isn't bad for breakfast, I grew up with it. 

Gadgets

58. Typewriters.  Totally used to play on my parents when I was little.  Hated getting my little fingers stuck inbetween the keys!
59. Putting film in your camera: 35mm may have some life still, but what about APS or disk?  I remember my first little blue camera with rolls of film.
60. Sending that film away to be processed.  Exciting!
61. Having physical prints of photographs come back to you.  Even more exciting!
62. CB radios.
63. Getting lost. With GPS coming to more and more phones, your location is only a click away.  I've never had GPS so this is still a common occurance for me.
64. Rotary-dial telephones.  I remember going down to the mall with my mom when I was little to pay the phone bill, in person.  They used to have all the latest phone models on the wall.  They were all push button except for a few rotary dials and all had the bells in them.  That means when you slammed the phone or just the receiver down you got that satisifying ding!
65. Answering machines.  I guess most of them are built into home phones now huh?  But they still exist in some capacity to me, just attached to a phone.
66. Using a stick to point at information on a wallchart.
67. Pay phones.  I miss these.  Always good in case your cell phone dies.
68. Phones with actual bells in them.  See 64.
69. Fax machines.  These are no more?
70. Vacuum cleaners with bags in them.  Still have one.

Everything Else

71. Taking turns picking a radio station, or selecting a tape, for everyone to listen to during a long drive.  Remember this one.
72. Remembering someone’s phone number.  Totally remember trying to remember people's numbers. 
73. Not knowing who was calling you on the phone.  That was so frustrating when I started dating. 
74. Actually going down to a Blockbuster store to rent a movie.  Last time I did this was probably last year, or no, that was a RedBox.  Almost the same thing. 
75. Toys actually being suitable for the under-3s.  Somebody doesn't have kids.  They always make toys for all ages, or age specific, come on.
76. LEGO just being square blocks of various sizes, with the odd wheel, window or door.
77. Waiting for the television-network premiere to watch a movie after its run at the theater.  That was an exciting night at my house.
78. Relying on the 5-minute sport segment on the nightly news for baseball highlights.
79. Neat handwriting.
80. The days before the nanny state.  Uh? 
81. Starbuck being a man.
82. Han shoots first.  Uh again?
83. “Obi-Wan never told you what happened to your father.” But they’ve already seen Episode III, so it’s no big surprise.  Star Wars, forever a classic.
84. Kentucky Fried Chicken, as opposed to KFC.  I still call it Kentucky fried. 
85. Trig tables and log tables.
86. “Don’t know what a slide rule is for …”
87. Finding books in a card catalog at the library.  That was a PAIN! 
88. Swimming pools with diving boards.   Why wouldn't swimming pools have diving boards anymore?
89. Hershey bars in silver wrappers.  Yeah.
90. Sliding the paper outer wrapper off a Kit-Kat, placing it on the palm of your hand and clapping to make it bang loudly. Then sliding your finger down the silver foil to break off the first finger.  Never thought to do this, or saw it done.
91. A Marathon bar (what a Snickers used to be called in Britain).  Always lived in the States.
92. Having to manually unlock a car door.  My power door locks stopped working years ago so I still do this all the time.
93. Writing a check.  I can't remember the last time I wrote a check out. 
94. Looking out the window during a long drive.  Still do. 
95. Roller skates, as opposed to blades.
96. Cash.
97. Libraries as a place to get books rather than a place to use the internet.  Hopefully they are still quiet there.
98. Spending your entire allowance at the arcade in the mall.  Whew! Hell yeah! 
99. Omni Magazine.
100. A physical dictionary — either for spelling or definitions.  Still got 'em. 
101. When a ‘geek’ and a ‘nerd’ were one and the same.  Aren't they still? 

So, some of these for me aren't old or out of date since I still do them.  Some I really haven't thought of in years, so it's nice to be reminded. 

I think it's a bad thing that society is progressing so fast in technology that even I'm nostalgic at a young age.  Technology is far surpassing anything I thought it could be, but people are not having the same deep connections with people that we need to communicate.  Very few people are friendly on the streets it seems, to me.  Half the time when you say hi to a stranger on the street, they ignore you.  I think technology may be making a lot of hermits out there.  People who are afraid to go out of the house at all, and/or make new friends, etc. 

I've said it before, "friends" or "followers" on Facebook/Twitter that you've never met aren't really your friends or even acquaintances.  I love the internet, and my cell phone, don't get me wrong.  They are very helpful and it's nice to have a way to contact people so easily, but I wish technology would just slow the hell down sometimes.  The more that we, as a society, have things that do things for us i.e. remote controls, car washes, dryers, dishwashers, drive through fast food, drive through banks, etc. the less we have to physically move.  America is the fattest nation in the world.  Americans need to move, need to exercise, apparently, anyway they can.  Americans have exchanged health and mobility for convenience.  It's a slippery slope, that's all I'm saying.

Let me know what you think?