What technology do you think everyone under 20 has never experienced but should?

1

I was thinking about how much technology has changed over the past few decades as I am currently working on a video essay on vinyl records.

When I was growing up, my grandparents lived in a small town and had a turntable console with a small collection of vinyl records. They played the same albums over and over, and somehow those songs became part of my childhood memories.

On the other side of my family, who lived in the city, they had an 8-track player and later a multi-CD stereo. It always felt like stepping into a different era.

As for me, I spent countless hours with a portable cassette player. I’d wait for my favorite songs to come on the radio, press record at just the right moment, and make mixtapes. Later came CDs, and buying an album from your favorite band felt like an event.

Today, my kids have millions of songs available instantly. They can ask Alexa to play almost anything, whenever they want. It’s incredibly convenient, but it also makes me wonder if something was lost along the way.

Physical media wasn’t just about the music, it created memories, anticipation, and a sense of ownership.

So I’m curious …

What technology do you think people under 20 have probably never experienced, but should at least try once?

It doesn’t have to be music. It could be anything, dial-up internet, film cameras, arcade machines, handwritten letters, old video game consoles, or something else entirely.

I’d love to hear what you’d pick and why.

2

Home data storage formats:

  • Minidisk players (popular in Japan)
  • Jazz Drive / Zip Drive
  • VCDs which predated DVDs and were popular in Hong Kong
  • Laserdisk players (basis of some arcade games too like Dragon’s Lair)
3

I remember my teachers using a real slide projector when I was in middle school, usually to show images from our geography or biology textbooks. The slides were small individual cards with transparent images in the center, and the teacher had to place them into the projector one by one in the correct order. The classroom would be darkened, the machine would get hot, and sometimes a slide would be upside down or out of focus.

I never saw one being used again after middle school. While writing this, it occurred to me that this may be why we still call PowerPoint pages “slides”. The younger people may not realize that slides were once actual physical objects you could hold in your hand.

4

Ohhh, the projector transparent slides. These were not my favorite in history class or any of the classes that had extensive notes to write down.

Professors would handwrite these, and some were hard to understand.

5

Very interesting tech pieces here Quincy. Which one you think people under 20 would had love and why? Which one you enjoy the most and why?

6

As someone in my early 20s, I happened to experience the rapid rise of technology since my childhood. I recently read that Gen Z experiences nostalgia the most for this reason, and that’s why we’ve started using digital cameras, film cameras, handwritten letters, and vinyls more often.

I liked watching cartoons on CDs - we shared downloaded movies with friends like this. I still have them, even though I don’t have a CD player :upside_down_face:

I’d want to try a portable player! Of course, Spotify is cool. But I’d love to queue one day to buy a new album from my favorite artists and spend a lot of time debating whether I should buy a new CD

7

This is awesome! I love the idea of sharing with friends and experiencing these valuable items together, especially since they’re making a big comeback. They’re pretty pricey and tough to find now.

I’ve been trying to get a turntable, but they’re expensive, and I also need to think about speakers and buying vinyl records, which are probably way pricier than it should be, IMO. I’m into old Jazz, and those records are especially hard to come by.

I used to have a portable CD player. I remember how tricky it was to take it for a run because it would skip so easily. Later on, they came out with models that had anti-skip features, but never got one those.

8

We had a gramophone when I was around 3 years old. Basically my first audio player. But we lost a stylus and my parents thought it would be easier to sell it rather than buy a new stylus. After that, we got a stereo system :musical_notes:

My grandma has a turntable and tons of vinyl records but I’m not sure she uses it.
I know my generation uses these records as a room decor by putting them on a wall - looks cool:)

9

I experienced an anachronistic technology at university (5-10 years ago), I had a professor that would write notes and diagrams on transparent sheets (transparencies), and then use a projector to show those to the class

That is an experience that I guess is getting lost

The others would or use a computer and project the computer screen, or write on the blackboard

10

Several artists are releasing their music on cassette tapes and vinyl albums.

Now I’m thinking it has less to with nostalgia, and more to do with attaching memories to a physical object.

The joystick. Modern controllers have too many buttons. Simple and clutter free.

11

Kinda like how we all want to own our own video games but a lot of companies have started to not want u to…

12

This sounds similar to the projector I mentioned. I just searched online and there are still a few stores selling it, at a price that’s one-fourth of my new projector.

13

It’s nice to hear that someone as young as you is interested in this kind of stuff.

I feel really lucky to have experienced queuing up to buy new albums on cassettes and CDs from my favorite singers. People often call it the golden age of Mandopop, when many legendary singers and songwriters were at their peak at the same time. Their songs were playing everywhere, in every shop on the streets. I’d carry a Walkman to listen to music, or take my MP3 player everywhere I went.

There were so many great movies, too. We used to rent VCDs and DVDs to watch Hong Kong movies. Even now, those classics still feel unmatched. That’s why whenever I talk about these old-school formats, it feels so personal and special. I’m just grateful I got to grow up in that time.

14

This is a great topic, Rafael.

I’d personally choose classic video game consoles. I still remember my Nintendo 64 and the joy I felt with every new cartridge I would get with a new game.

Yes, for everyone who has not seen this before, games used to come in sort of like gray large cartridges that you would insert into a slot in the Nintendo 64.

My favorite video game for the Nintendo 64 was Super Mario 64. :grin:

I used to love reading to read the instructions that came with the new games I got. That experience of opening a box and seeing everything that was inside was priceless.

Also, the PlayStation 2. Awesome console. I still remember the leap in graphics.

15

My teachers used that slide projector in middle school and high school too!

I loved it when the teacher would turn off the light and everyone was focused on the slides and the images being projected.

Sometimes, I remember them adjusting the slide or the slide being a bit out of focus, like you mentioned.

16

I didn’t really get to enjoy game consoles when I was young. I did have the first NES for about a month when I was around 11.

My real obsession was video arcades, but that only lasted until I was about 12. I played Street Fighter, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Space Invaders, and a bunch of others that I don’t remember the names.

Funny enough, I now own an Xbox S with a couple of games, and I play it every now and then. I was more of an outdoor kid back then. I think most kids back on my time prefer to be outside.

My brother, on the other hand, got to enjoy an NES 64, PlayStation, and more.

Thinking back, I remember having a Gameboy, but I only recall playing Tetris on it.

17

Oh man, transparencies! That takes me back! When I was a very young thing, our teachers used those!

Some years later, I had a maths teacher at one point who used to have a thing he’d plug his graphing calculator into so he could use the projector to display what was on the graphing calculator on the dry-erase board. Sometimes, he’d project little maths games on the board as well.

As a general reply to this thread:

I’m in my late 30s, so I got to grow up with cassettes, lps, vhs, and cds. I watched as modems went from 14.4kbps through to 28kbps, and the modem we had the longest was a U.S. Robotics 56kbps, running on Windows 98. It took a while before we finally got broadband and Windows Vista. xD;

I think, everyone should get to experience the old dialup days at least once, if only to appreciate how fast the internet is nowadays. That and older operating systems – as I mentioned, I largely grew up using Windows 98, but before that, there was Windows 95, and before that, Windows 3.1. (that’s the earliest Windows system I remember using). Prior to that? Atari ST.

(I also got to experience the BBC Micro computers growing up as well. xD)

18

Dial-up! The sounds of dial-up were so captivating. I really liked watching that cheerful AOL dial-up animation.

19

35mm film cameras.

Nothing like the inability to edit a photo, putting a precious memory into a photo album. Reading a handwritten note on the back from a dearly departed loved one.

20

I liked to imagine that the sounds were the signals moving through the phone wires and equipment. I later found out that the sounds are actually the modem/computer negotiating with the server-side equipment, demonstrating capabilities and exchanging handshakes and so on. <3