Random Thought Of The Day #731

Day 731

Raise your hand if you remember the film strip and cassette combo from elementry school.

Seriously... anyone under 25, put your hand down, because somehow I doubt it. Unless it was like kindergarten.

I hate to rehash this topic becuase I've been doing a little too much rehasning of old popular topics in the past few weeks, but I'm just considering the kind of major changes that we have had in the past 15 or 18 years. I think it actually manages to make me feel older.

That's it... it's not the years and years of hard drinking, too much smoking, horrible diet, and copious frivelous sex that make me feel old. It's Moore's Law. Technology advancing faster and faster makes me feel ancient long before my time.

So what else do you remember from the "oh god, I can't believe it's been that long" ago period of school?

Fucking Oregon Trail? DOS prompt? home cordless phones? console TV's? Vinyl? The amusing way that anyone presently under 20 will look at you sideways if you set a pencil and a cassette next to each other today and ask "what is the relationship between these 2?" Blowing into the Nintendo? The Konami Code? The fucking Power Glove? 83 cent gas? Cigarettes under $2 a pack? When tights-as-pants were a hideous affront to fashion and basic decency the FIRST time around? Stone Washed Denim? When a 3" heel was "really high"? Mtv that actually showed music videos. Regularly? Roller Rinks? The SKRREEETTTCCHHHH BOOP BEEP SREEEEEEEEEEECH BOOOOOOOODDDDDD DEEP DEEP noise of a dial up internet connection? The WALKMAN? Going to THEATERS to watch porn and not just on your phone while in the subway? Pee Wee Herman being on TV?

Sorry... nothing against the earlier or later time periods, this was really a transitional period between the basic technology that wasn't going to entirely blow up in your face that was going on in the 60's and 70's and early 80's and the modern tech where "I HAVE THE ENTIRE INTERNET AND INFINITE CONNECTIVITY TO EVERYONE IN MY POCKET ON A BAR OF GLASS" of today.

So the big questions for all of  you is ... what are you kind of nostalgic about?

And the second question... what piece of tech would you want to take back in time and to what period in the last 40 or 50 years? I would like to take an iPhone (with service) back to the 70's or maybe the mid 80's so that I could stand next to someone with one of those Zack Morris phones and laugh at them. But then they'd beat me to death with their 20 lbs brick of a phone.