100 Things Your Kids May Never Know About

[Freakzilla]

Audio-Visual Entertainment:

Inserting a VHS tape into a VCR to watch a movie or to record something.
Super-8 movies and cine film of all kinds.
Playing music on an audio tape using a personal stereo. See what happens when you give a Walkman to todays teenager.
The number of TV channels being a single digit. I remember it being a massive event when Britain got its fourth channel.
Standard-definition, CRT TVs filling up half your living room.
Rotary dial televisions with no remote control. You know, the ones where the kids were the remote control.
High-speed dubbing.
8-track cartridges.
Vinyl records. Even today’s DJs are going laptop or CD.
Betamax tapes.
MiniDisc.
Laserdisc: the LP of DVD.
Scanning the radio dial and hearing static between stations. (Digital tuners + HD radio bork this concept.)
Shortwave radio.
3-D movies meaning red-and-green glasses.
Watching TV when the networks say you should. Tivo and Sky+ are slowing killing this one.
That there was a time before ‘reality TV.’

Computers and Videogaming

Wires. OK, so they’re not gone yet, but it won’t be long
The scream of a modem connecting.
The buzz of a dot-matrix printer
5- and 3-inch floppies, Zip Discs and countless other forms of data storage.
Using jumpers to set IRQs.
DOS.
Terminals accessing the mainframe.
Screens being just green (or orange) on black.
Tweaking the volume setting on your tape deck to get a computer game to load, and waiting ages for it to actually do it.
Daisy chaining your SCSI devices and making sure they’ve all got a different ID.
Counting in kilobytes.
Wondering if you can afford to buy a RAM upgrade.
Blowing the dust out of a NES cartridge in the hopes that it’ll load this time.
Turning a PlayStation on its end to try and get a game to load.
Joysticks.
Having to delete something to make room on your hard drive.
Booting your computer off of a floppy disk.
Recording a song in a studio.

The Internet

NCSA Mosaic.
Finding out information from an encyclopedia.
Using a road atlas to get from A to B.
Doing bank business only when the bank is open.
Shopping only during the day, Monday to Saturday.
Phone books and Yellow Pages.
Newspapers and magazines made from dead trees.
Actually being able to get a domain name consisting of real words.
Filling out an order form by hand, putting it in an envelope and posting it.
Not knowing exactly what all of your friends are doing and thinking at every moment.
Carrying on a correspondence with real letters, especially the handwritten kind.
Archie searches.
Gopher searches.
Concatenating and UUDecoding binaries from Usenet.
Privacy.
The fact that words generally don’t have num8er5 in them.
Correct spelling of phrases, rather than TLAs.
Waiting several minutes (or even hours!) to download something.
The time before botnets/security vulnerabilities due to always-on and always-connected PCs
The time before PC networks.
When Spam was just a meat product — or even a Monty Python sketch.

Gadgets

Typewriters.
Putting film in your camera: 35mm may have some life still, but what about APS or disk?
Sending that film away to be processed.
Having physical prints of photographs come back to you.
CB radios.
Getting lost. With GPS coming to more and more phones, your location is only a click away.
Rotary-dial telephones.
Answering machines.
Using a stick to point at information on a wallchart
Pay phones.
Phones with actual bells in them.
Fax machines.
Vacuum cleaners with bags in them.

Everything Else

Taking turns picking a radio station, or selecting a tape, for everyone to listen to during a long drive.
Remembering someone’s phone number.
Not knowing who was calling you on the phone.
Actually going down to a Blockbuster store to rent a movie.
Toys actually being suitable for the under-3s.
LEGO just being square blocks of various sizes, with the odd wheel, window or door.
Waiting for the television-network premiere to watch a movie after its run at the theater.
Relying on the 5-minute sport segment on the nightly news for baseball highlights.
Neat handwriting.
The days before the nanny state.
Starbuck being a man.
Han shoots first.
“Obi-Wan never told you what happened to your father.” But they’ve already seen episode III, so it’s no big surprise.
Kentucky Fried Chicken, as opposed to KFC.
Trig tables and log tables.
“Don’t know what a slide rule is for …”
Finding books in a card catalog at the library.
Swimming pools with diving boards.
Hershey bars in silver wrappers.
Sliding the paper outer wrapper off a Kit-Kat, placing it on the palm of your hand and clapping to make it bang loudly. Then sliding your finger down the silver foil of break off the first finger
A Marathon bar (what a Snickers used to be called in Britain).
Having to manually unlock a car door.
Writing a check.
Looking out the window during a long drive.
Roller skates, as opposed to blades.
Cash.
Libraries as a place to get books rather than a place to use the internet.
Spending your entire allowance at the arcade in the mall.
Omni Magazine
A physical dictionary — either for spelling or definitions.
When a ‘geek’ and a ‘nerd’ were one and the same.

[Nekhrun]

Good riddance to all of it.

[Eyes High]

Gas under a $ 1/gal

[Rakis]

When Spam was just a meat product — or even a Monty Python sketch.

Aw yes

[GamePlayer]

You can tell you're a grumpy old man when....

[SandChigger]

The days before the nanny state.

Han always shot first. That's why Leia was always so pissy.

Anyway, there's a whole universe my kids will never know.

[Freakzilla]

My younger kids don't yet understand that all TV shows are not "On Demand".

They have never experienced life without cartoons at any given moment. When I was a kid cartoons came on only after school and Saturday morning.

[A Thing of Eternity]

I like the recording studio bit. A shocking amount of today's music is recorded in someone's basement (though usually with enough renos and equipment and $$$ to basically justify calling that basement a studio). It's an absolute revolution for smaller bands and overall creativity, now people can play whatever music they want and not have to jocky for label attention.

[Freakzilla]

I feel like the "Concept Album" is a dying breed of music due to the trend to download singles. I'll be sad to see that go.

[Ampoliros]

yeah i still try to buy hard copies whenever i can, its nice to actually see the cover art.

[Spicelon]

There's some company that assembles data like this every year for colleges. The staff and faculties at
universities use this data to gage the incoming freshman class. My daughter, though, has always known a
world of cell phones and laptops and the Internet, all things I consider relatively recent developments. I
didn't really feel that old until a few weeks ago when my son asked who Michael Jackson was, and my
daughter said, "he's the pop star from way back when." Swear to god, those were her exact words.

[A Thing of Eternity]

I feel like the "Concept Album" is a dying breed of music due to the trend to download singles. I'll be sad to see that go.

I think it was a dying breed anyways, very rare to see one for almost as long as I can remember. You're right that this will hurt it further - but people who would have made a concept album 10 years ago still will now, casual listeners will miss this entirely, but real fans will get it. Albums will never stop existing (for music requiring actual musicians), because it will always be more efficient to record songs in big batches.

There are definitely a lot of terrible things that have happened recently to music, but I think the good will outweigh the bad in the end. Will I miss having a physical peice of art to hold in my hands? Yes, but this is mostly about music, and that is just expanding exponentially right now. Never before has it been easier to make music.

[Omphalos]

I feel like the "Concept Album" is a dying breed of music due to the trend to download singles. I'll be sad to see that go.

You mean like Terra Incognita, right?

[Eyes High]

You can tell you're a grumpy old man when....

When the music is too loud

[SadisticCynic]

I feel like the "Concept Album" is a dying breed of music due to the trend to download singles. I'll be sad to see that go.

I think it was a dying breed anyways, very rare to see one for almost as long as I can remember. You're right that this will hurt it further - but people who would have made a concept album 10 years ago still will now, casual listeners will miss this entirely, but real fans will get it. Albums will never stop existing (for music requiring actual musicians), because it will always be more efficient to record songs in big batches.

There are definitely a lot of terrible things that have happened recently to music, but I think the good will outweigh the bad in the end. Will I miss having a physical peice of art to hold in my hands? Yes, but this is mostly about music, and that is just expanding exponentially right now. Never before has it been easier to make music.

Depends on the band I suppose, Opeth have 2 full concept albums, My Arms, Your Hearse (1998 - OK that one is more then 10 years) Still Life (1999) and more recently a concept album except for the last song, which is not connected, Ghost Reveries (2005). Those are the only ones I have so far. I love albums that have at least have a theme or some sort of focus. They feel more coherent. Music is better when you have a chance to sit back and listen to a whole album. Plus some artwork is absolutely brilliant.


Also had to laugh at the NES reference, although my gaming memory only goes back to the SNES.

[GamePlayer]

You can tell you're a grumpy old man when....

When the music is too loud

Or when one doesn't know music, like those lamenting the "extinction" of the concept album

[Karyle]

My wife and I were looking at this list on yahoo earlier...

We have a 5-month old, so we were trying to figure out which things we think about enough to explain to him as he grows up. Certain things, like the NES cartridge bit, he'll know because we still have our old NES hooked up, but who really thinks about floppy discs?

[SandChigger]

I feel like the "Concept Album" is a dying breed of music due to the trend to download singles. I'll be sad to see that go.

You mean like Terra Incognita, right?

Nyah, beat me to it.


(Edit: Actually, I guess that's the book title. The album is Beyond the Bore-izon. )

[Freakzilla]

My wife and I were looking at this list on yahoo earlier...

We have a 5-month old, so we were trying to figure out which things we think about enough to explain to him as he grows up. Certain things, like the NES cartridge bit, he'll know because we still have our old NES hooked up, but who really thinks about floppy discs?

FH's outline for D7 is allegedly on floppies... and is not printed or saved in any other medium! (per BM).

[Freakzilla]

I feel like the "Concept Album" is a dying breed of music due to the trend to download singles. I'll be sad to see that go.

You mean like Terra Incognita, right?

Nyah, beat me to it.


(Edit: Actually, I guess that's the book title. The album is Beyond the Bore-izon. )

That shit is TRUE?

[SandChigger]

What is truth, my son?


What, you'd listen to an old nasty bastard anyway?

Nah, as with all things (with me), it's an amalgam of truth and silliness!

Book: Terra Incognita: The Edge of the World
Album: Terra Incognita: Beyond the Horizon

[SadisticCynic]

Terrra Incognita keeps making me think of Transformers:

Planets in disguise!

Except Terra is just Earth (I think) so its really just Earth in disguise.... Aw well.

[Omphalos]

What is truth, my son?


What, you'd listen to an old nasty bastard anyway?

Nah, as with all things (with me), it's an amalgam of truth and silliness!

Book: Terra Incognita: The Edge of the World
Album: Terra Incognita: Beyond the Horizon

That should be your rapper name. Ol' Nasty Bastard. "ONB."

[Freakzilla]

Perfect!

[smugetsu]

The old Commodore 64...I used to love gaming on that.

If I had seen into the future when I was 6 and saw the way video games would actually be today, I probably would have wet my pants. And I'm sure it will only get better as technology continues to improve.

As far as music goes...

Apjak and I actually had a discussion where I declared CDs a dead medium. These days, you can store whole albums, hundreds of them, on a device that fits in your pocket...though I do miss having a nice rack of CDs and a little boombox to put them in. We live in a digital age, I guess. I have been known to, um, procure music by less-than-legal means (these forums are anonymous, right? ). However, if I know a band and wish to support them, you better believe I'll fork over the cash to buy their album on iTunes.

Regardless, digital music will never replace the concert experience...seeing real people play real instruments and put on a good show.