Technology Flashback!

Written by ANNIE PERETS

Most of you reading this would have lived through at least 3 decades, 2 centuries and 2 millenniums. You would have experienced firsthand the extent to which technical advances have really changed the world.

Not only can your grandparents say “well back in my day…” now you can too. Remember the good old days when you would wait hours listening to the radio waiting for your favourite song, and when it came on you’d try to be as quiet as possible so you could record it?

Remember dial-up internet and having to listen to that annoying dial-up tone every time you wanted to connect to the web? Oh, and then waiting an hour for each page to load?

Some other notable things that have become obsolete in the last decade are:
Film Cameras- It was always great fun going to the shops getting film developed and then trying to see your photos in the black film. Exceptwhen you got one of the disposal cameras and you’d waste all your shots on one thing, and then fun would be over. You can now buy these film cameras dirt cheap on eBay.

Floppy Disks- At the time these were so popular they were carried around everywhere in all the pretty colours they came in. Now you literally can’t find any floppy disks on sale anywhere and computers have long stopped coming with floppy disk drives.

VCRs- Most of you probably don’t have VCR players any more, or video tapes for that matter. In DVD stores and libraries you’ll generally find a tiny little section of video tapes somewhere in the corner that no one really looks at. My prediction is that DVDs will soon too become a thing of the past.

So if all those things from our youths are already obsolete it would mean that things that are now modern will one day be obsolete too.

Many adults have well developed penmanship because they were taught the skill at school. We on the other hand learned to touch type, with most of our assignments done on the computer. Now, at university everything is done through technology with students using laptops and iPads instead of workbooks. Many are against this and feel nostalgic towards the old fashioned pen and paper method.

Unfortunately we can’t go back in time and live like we used to. Fashion comes in and out but technology only moves forward. Sure, those who are really against the changes can go become hermits and live like cavemen did, but I would imagine most of us are not like that. We have to learn to accept change, like it or not, and conform to Julia Gillard’s slogan of ‘moving forward.’