Tuesday, May 13, 2008

The March of Obsolescence

There is an australian website www.obsoleteskills.com devoted to the memory of such things as hand rolling down a window in your car. HOw about dialing a rotary telephone, changing the ribbon on a typewriter, rewinding audio or video cassettes, adjusting the rabbit ears on your TV, checking your beeper, formatting a floppy disk, loading film into a camera, using a darkroom, licking stamps, paying with a check (ok I still do this), using the Dewey Decimal system to find a book in the library, long division by hand, ripping the trim off computer paper, heating a tv dinner in the oven, riding a single speed bike, using correction fluid, putting a nickel in the jukebox, defrosting the frig, using carbon paper to make copies, sniffing freshly memeographed tests (all the more reason to be a teacher or helper) and the purple ink on the tests that smeared, milk deliveries and crawling under a door of a pay toilet.

Awwww the good ole days. Other things I remember are playing in the sprinkler in the front yard with the neighbor kids, writing term papers long hand on paper, no computers or calculators in high school or college, getting up to change the TV station, no computers or cable, and the list goes on and on.

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