I'm Becoming Obsolete

Do you remember when you used to have to get up off of the couch to change the channel on your television?

If you do, you're old like me.

I was telling my college students the other day about how the new formats of media are actually changing the way we act and think. Consider the things that young people now have never experienced. Can you add to my list?

1) Physically turning the knob on a television to get a new station. In addition, we often had to adjust the rabbit ear antennas on the top of the set and sometimes still dealt with a scrolling picture.

2) Waiting for a movie to be released on television. I remember watching The Wizard of Oz once a year. Once a movie was shown in the theater, we often did not see it for years. VCRs changed our ability to see old movies.

3) Watching home movies on reel-to-reel projectors or, better yet, slides. I have a slide that shows my family watching slides. This was a big family event - to set up a screen and gather around a slide projector.

4) Buying a record, 8-track, or cassette tape. These "old" forms of music distribution are things of the past. My daughter used to call our records: big cds.

5) The Reader's Guide to Periodical Literature - Our English teacher used to make us look up subjects for research in this multi-volume index. Then we had to hope the library had our particular magazine. Now? We Google...

What else?

Comments

Anonymous said…

I remember:
Searching through the card files in the library instead of on a computer for the book I wanted
When books didn't have to become movies
When movies didn't have to have action figures and other merchandise (except maybe a lunchbox)
Waiting for your film to be developed at Kmart and hoping the picture turned out because you couldn't fix it after you snapped it

I would go on except I'm getting older by the minute...

February 26, 2011 at 7:53 PM

Donna Boucher said…

A telephone with a long and twisty cord.

No phone calls to the house after nine.

Sisters yelling, " Donna, phone for you, it's a boy!!!!!"

:D

June 17, 2011 at 7:31 AM

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