The other day my daughter was nagging me for something I had previously said no to, oh I don’t know, let’s say A THOUSAND TIMES BEFORE, when I turned to her and snapped “For heaven’s sake child, you are a broken record!” This is where she paused and cocked her head to the side and very calmly said, “What’s a record?” And I couldn’t help but laugh. After all, she was born in 2004, long after the demise of vinyl. Why would she know what a record was?
It reminded me of a trip we took several years ago to Cape Breton for a family reunion. While staying at a cottage we asked Alex to call his mom and let her know that we had arrived safely. A few minutes later we found him standing at the phone with the receiver in his hand and a blank look on his face. It was a rotary phone and he had no idea how to use it. He was pressing his finger into each hole trying to press it as hard as he could. In one of those fine parenting moments we cracked up laughing at him. Hard laughter. Thankfully, he’s grown into a young man with a sense of humour, with no permanent damage from our teasing. It could have gone so, so wrong.
Today, after filling my 2011 census out online, I started to think about all the things in my life that have become obsolete. Like, paper based census forms for example. I still occasionally refer to my iPod as a Walkman and Costco is still The Price Club to me. Walmart will forever be Woolco. So what else have I seen move to extinction in my 41 years? How about Beta, VHS, VCR’s, pagers, floppy disks, and cassette tapes. What about getting up to change the channel? What a joke that was. Actually, having to get up and physically walk to the TV to change the channel and then stand there as you scrolled through all 10 channels to find something good on. Crazy, I tell you, crazy. I took a typewriting class in high school. Typewriting. Insert paper, roll paper, make sure ink was lined up, tick, tick, tick, ka-ching, push the thingy at the top over and start the next line. This was preparing me for a future.....without TYPEWRITERS!!!!
Does anybody remember 8 track tapes? I remember my Dad having a load of those in his 1973 Cutlass Supreme....the tank. People complain about gas guzzlers today! I also remember he had a CB radio in this car, around about the time Smokey and the Bandit was all the rage. We sang Christmas carols in traffic on it. Good times, good times. I also recall driving in a car with no seatbelt, not having to wear a helmet biking and coming in when the street lights came on. Some change is good, some not so good. I also remember carrying my music around by a handle with my funky boombox, playing mixed tapes I recorded off the radio. Seriously? Can you believe we can now get all our music on something as small as a iPod Shuffle?
Imagine the space these took up in your home?
The passing of film is a double edged sword. Remember that you only had 24 or 32 pictures to take, and you couldn't preview them? The flip side of this of course is that now you can take thousands of pictures and then not know which ones to develop. The choice is so overwhelming that printing photos has become a chore rather than something fun you dropped off at the mall and hoped for the best an hour later.
What will my daughters see go obsolete in their lifetimes? I’m thinking cash might be a goner. With everything paid for by debit or credit, I think purses might be a lot lighter in the future as toonies and loonies go join the do-do bird. It’s also fairly certain that public phones won’t exist either. If I was a watch manufacturer, I might start looking at other opportunities. Who wears a watch anymore? For sure, DVD’s will become a thing of the past as services like Netflix save you from ever having to leave your house.
I pray that the phone book hits the obsolete pile sooner rather than later. It is such a tremendous waste of resources to print that big book off that I’m guessing 90% of the people immediately toss it in the recycle bin anyway. I was stunned when one showed up on my doorstep this year. If I want to find something or someone I hit Google. You? I also think mail will become obsolete. Again, tremendous amount of resources to make the paper, print, and then deliver and pick up that I can’t imagine it being sustainable in the long run.
Finally, I hope normal films don’t die out. It seems like every other movie that comes out anymore is 3D and I know many, many people love it but frankly, it gives me a headache. Silently praying this is only a fad.
Do you silently miss something that has gone obsolete? Is there something you couldn’t wait to say good riddance to? What do you think your children’s children will have no idea existed?
Printer-friendly version