This cute clip shows young kids exposed to “old” technology and asked to guess what it was for. The video is in French but with English subtitles. The reactions are very cute and interesting, and I’m not sure what to think about the fact that I used all these items except one (the eight track player).
On a related topic, somebody recently asked on the superuser.com site what the drives A: and B: are used for on Windows…
This technology is barely twenty-thirty years old and it’s not just obsolete, it’s already almost forgotten. Soon, all these items will need a special mention in history text books…
“When you took a picture, you had to wait for several days before you could see it? Surely you’re joking, Daddy?”
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#1 by Sean Ness on January 12, 2011 - 1:11 pm
Soon: How could you not *see* who you were talking to on the phone? Was your display broken?
#2 by Robert Konigsberg on January 13, 2011 - 3:08 am
I’m kind of upset the 5 1/4″ diskette was incorrectly identified as an 8″ floppy.
#3 by Sony Mathew on January 17, 2011 - 9:49 am
nice..used all of them myself. i get nostalgic about a few things like music but never about tech – i despise all gadgets once the next gen is even remotely within reach..haha.
#4 by Jamison Gray on February 7, 2011 - 10:50 am
Very entertaining – those once-familiar technologies do feel pretty ancient now. What’s most interesting to me is how the old phone seemed so awkward to them, though its form persists in technology as the metaphor for calling someone – the “phone” icon that’s usually shaped like one of those handsets, the verb “to dial”….
To put this in true perspective, though, may of these items might not have been familiar to 8-year-olds even in their heyday. Floppies and video disks, and computers in general, were things that adults played with, and weren’t nearly as common in households as today. Kids might be similarly mystified by spark plugs or maybe even USB thumb drives today; they aren’t obselete, they’re just part of the adult world.