40 Things Your Kids May Never Know About

I recently came across a blog post titled "100 Things Your Kids May Never Know About." After reading through it, there were some that definitely struck a cord with me and others that (being 20 years younger than the author) I've already missed out on...

Here are the 30 that stuck with me along with a few I added... I'd love to hear others if you have additions!

1. Inserting a VHS tape into a VCR to watch a movie or to record something.
2. Playing music on an audio tape using a personal stereo. See what happens when you give a Walkman to today’s teenager.
3. Rotary dial televisions with no remote control. You know, the ones where the kids were the remote control.
4. That there was a time before ‘reality TV.’
5. The scream of a modem connecting.
6. 5- and 3-inch floppies, Zip Discs and countless other forms of data storage.
7. DOS.
8. Screens being just green (or orange) on black.
9. Blowing the dust out of a NES cartridge in the hopes that it’ll load this time.
10. Having to delete something to make room on your hard drive.
11. Finding out information from an encyclopedia.
12. Using a road atlas to get from A to B.
13. Doing bank business only when the bank is open. And shopping only during the day, Monday to Saturday.
14. Not knowing exactly what all of your friends are doing and thinking at every moment.
15. Carrying on a correspondence with real letters, especially the handwritten kind.
16. Correct spelling of phrases.
17. Waiting several minutes (or even hours!) to download something.
18. Putting film in your camera: 35mm may have some life still, but what about APS or disk? And sending that film away to be processed. And having physical prints of photos come back to you.
19. Getting lost. With GPS coming to more and more phones, your location is only a click away.
20. Using a stick to point at information on a wallchart
21. Vacuum cleaners with bags in them.
22. Remembering someone’s phone number (in your head).
    
23. Not knowing who was calling you on the phone.
24. Kentucky Fried Chicken, as opposed to KFC.
25. Finding books in a card catalog at the library.
26. Writing a check.
27. Looking out the window during a long drive.
28. Cash.
29. Libraries as a place to get books rather than a place to use the internet.
30. A physical dictionary — either for spelling or definitions.

Here are a few I want to add:

1. Cell phones once came in bags... and then with antennas that couldn't be retracted.
2. When it was only an extra precaution to wear your seatbelt.
3. No TV Guide channel!
4. The first AMAZING digital cameras that stored photos on floppy discs.
5. "Macintosh" as opposed to Mac.
   
6. Facebook only being for college kids. At SOME colleges. No photos or status updates.
7. When AOL was the ONLY web browser, and instead of web addresses, you used keywords... followed by Netscape Navigator.
8. Life B.G. --- Before Google
   
9. When it was a big deal to get your first e-mail address... mine was emanri@hotmail.com.
   
10. The hassle of skipping between tracks on audio tapes... it was all trial and error!!
    

Read Nathan Barry's full article with the entire list of the "100 Things Your Kids May Never Know About" here.

Also, in a post on DownTuned, Von lists the 10 Things the "iPod Generation" Will Never Experience...

What 15 years can do to technology...

Technology never ceases to amaze me. I found a "Wired" magazine from January 1995 and as I flipped through it, I found some pretty incredible high-tech pieces. Fourteen years later, in 2009, these devices look like they were from the Stone Age. Where will we be 14 years from now? In 2023, I'll be 36... Will our current technology look as archaic as these?

One of my favorite quotes is very fitting:

"At first people refuse to believe that a strange new thing can be done. Then they begin to hope it can be done. Then they see it can be done. Then it is done and all the world wonders why it was not done centuries ago." -Frances Burnett

















Six Shooter the Pioneer DRM-604x, quad-speed CD-ROM drive that holds six disks in a fast-spinning magazine.

$1,395-$2,495
















NEC's LCD 1280 monitor

Made to order! This "sleek" 13-inch LCD monitor has a crisp 24-bit display resolution of 1280x1024.

For the low, low price of... $11,755
















The NoteJet II 486 C

A color laptop with a bubble-jet printer built into the computer. Weighs under 10 pounds! $3,599 with a 340 MB hard drive.





















"AnthroCarts will knock your socks off!" And how can you resist that hairstyle??
















"If you want to see a full 8 1/2" x 11" page without scrolling, shrinking, or spending a lot of money, only the Portrait/15 Pivot makes sense."

$699
















Tektronix Phaser 140 Color Printer - 360 dpi

Starts at only $1,695
















"Beam into the ether with Magic Link, Sony's nifty pocket communicator."

"At $200, these things will be irresistible. And the built-in, low-cost modem, though easy to use, only whets the appetite for a built-in, low-cost cellular phone. When that comes - maybe in '96? - we're in PDA nirvana."

YES! CD-ROM.

Photos and descriptions from "Wired" Magazine, January 1995: 3.01.