Friday, December 18, 2015

Outdated Devices That Make Us Feel Nostalgic




With the holidays around the corner, we can’t help thinking back to the good ol’ years.
The holiday season makes us nostalgic and I can’t help but think of all my techy Christmas
gifts that I’d be hoping and praying were under that Christmas tree. Needless to say,
technology has come far and thinking back at some of my favorite gifts also makes
me think about how far we’ve come. So without further ado, and in no particular order,
here are some Outdated Devices That Make Us Feel Nostalgic.

  1. Motorola RAZR Flip Phone

     


    First developed in 2004, this cellular flip phone dominated the market for four years.
    With a flashy sleek design and a wide array of colors, this phone was a prime example
     of how technology became a fashion. You couldn’t wait for someone to text you
    so you could nonchalantly whip out this phone and slyly text back so everyone
    could see you were in the in with fashionable technology. What said “I love you”
    more than knowing exactly which color Motorola RAZR that person wanted?


  2. Corded Phones


    Can you believe there was a time before the cell phone? Mind blowing right?
    How about before cordless phones? How did we survive that era? You wanted
    to talk to someone on the phone? Try being tethered to a wall, usually in the most
    public part of the house. What better gift than your own personal corded phone
    in your own personal bedroom, possibly with your own personal phone line.
    Mom, Dad, you shouldn’t have!


  3. Sony Walkman


    Not to be confused for the Discman that was later developed in the 1990s, the
    Walkman was a portable audio cassette player. Do you remember cassettes?
    They were those little analog devices that recorded music. No track bookmarking?
    Cool, just let me push the fast-forward button and magically hope I got to the track
    that I wanted. But hey, at least I can play music anywhere anytime; just have to
    make sure I have an endless supply of AA batteries.


  4. Mp3 Players


    Skipping over the Walkman generation, the portable mp3 player symbolized
    an exciting turn for portable music-playing technology. Holding a whopping
    (/sarcasm) 32 MB – 128 MB of data when they first came to market, they
    were more portable than the Walkmans and Diskmans and with way more
    functionality. Commence the era of pirated file sharing.


  5. Computer Games via Floppy Disk


    If you think a 32 MB was a limited amount of data, try the floppy disk with
    its groundbreaking 1.2 MB of data. To put this in perspective, a single
    song (at an average of 3 MB) would require 3 floppy disks to store it. We use
    to fit whole games on there (*cough* Oregon Trail). At least the floppy disk shall
    be immortalized forever as an iconic symbol, more commonly known as the
    “save icon”.


  6. Nintendo Entertainment System (NES)


    Symbolic of retro gaming, the NES was Nintendo’s first home video game console
    in North America. Retailing at US$89.99 for the console, and an average of
    US$50 a game, its 8-bit graphics along with its 8-bit music are still iconic today
    sparking the popular franchised games like Super Mario Bros. and Zelda.
     Nothing is more reminiscent of old school gaming like blowing out a video game cartridge.


  7. Pager


    That thing that all the doctors in our favorite dramas carry around? Yes, that was
    actually used as a pretty standard communication device back in the day.
    Whether it was the one-way pager or the two-way pager, this was the start of
    commercial SMS (short message service). *Beep beep beep* “CALL ME”,
    and then you ran to the nearest payphone (you know, that booth that Superman
    used as a dressing room).


  8. Personal Digital Assistant (PDA)


    Wow, a computer in my hand? That is exciting! Granted it had a tenth of the
    processing power of the average smartphone of today and were primarily
    used by the business elite, it spurred the movement for the innovation of mobile
    business devices.

Well that’s my list of outdated devices that sent me careening down memory lane.
Which outdated devices make you feel nostalgic?

No comments:

Post a Comment