You know you’re starting to get a little long in the tooth when you see brand new technology hit the market…and then you see it go away.
I might be wrong about this one, but I remember my older brother getting a Walkman when I was very young and I think they were pretty new…and we all know what happened to those contraptions.
I’ll have to check the date on that one…
Do you remember “new” technology that has now gone by the wayside?
AskReddit users talked about this.
1. They were hot for a minute.
“Digital photo frames.
Everyone seemed to have one for about 3 weeks and now I haven’t seen one in about 10 years.”
2. Zip it up!
“Zip drives.
In college we had to try to save all our massive Photoshop files to max 500MB ZIP disks.”
3. I remember it well.
“T9 texting.
I learned an entirely new way of relaying language and will never use it again.”
4. Fancy stuff.
“Caller ID boxes.
I used to think we were so fancy since we had the little box with the screen that showed name and number before anyone else we knew had one.”
5. That’s too bad.
“I hadn’t even realized the decline of CDs until I bought a laptop with no CD-Rom.”
6. Early digital camera.
“My dad was super excited the first time he brought a digital camera home for us to play with.
It was a brick that took 8 photos and saved them onto a floppy disc.
It even came with a floppy disc carry case so you didn’t have to worry about losing them.”
7. Still have some of them.
“At some point in the late 90’s Best Buy had a black Friday sale on writable DVDs.
I bought 200.
I have about 150 of them left.”
8. Futuristic.
“Palm Pilots.
I remember my uncle had one and I thought it was the coolest thing I had ever seen.
Like something from Star Trek.”
9. I still have one!
“VCRs.
I remember when they cost close to $1,000 Canadian and were the greatest thing ever.”
10. It was a big deal.
“TiVo.
It was a big deal to be able to automatically record shows, and an even bigger deal to be able to skip commercials.
Now, we just watch it on-demand.”
11. Do you remember?
“WebTV.
An Internet box that connected to the phone line and the TV.
Internet access without a full-on computer!”
12. Like a high roller.
“Cordless phones.
When they first dropped it was the newest thing imaginable.
Flash forward a few years and no one even has a house phone.”
13. Strictly for my mp3s.
“Dedicated Mp3 players. Going from a walkman to a discman to an mp3 player was huge. “I can have ALL my albums on this one device!?”
These days people look at me funny for not just using my phone. But the ipod classic is still the best music device I’ve ever found.”
14. Big industry.
“Custom ringtones.
It used to be such a huge industry back in the day and people would actually pay money for s**tty 8bit versions of songs to play when people called them.
Now most people I know just keep their phones on vibrate or silent and use default ringtones.”
Now it’s your turn.
In the comments, tell us about the technology you’ve seen come along and then go away.
Thanks a lot!
