At the very least, Back to the Future promised us self-lacing shoes and hover boards, but the closest we got were the McFly Hyperdunks, and sadly those still require manual lace-tying.
Technology may not have made the leaps and bounds we once envisioned, but I think it's still easy to forget how quickly much of today's ubiquitous items would have been considered witchcraft a mere decade ago.
I remember, for example, not having internet.
Think about that for a minute. Sure, we all remember a vague childhood that didn't include incessant email checking, mp3's and all-you-can-surf pornography. But I cannot for the life of me empathize with adults who lived their early 20's and onward without the 'net. How did they do it?!
How did they find out what band was coming to town? Hear about new restaurants? Get up-to-the-minute news?
I remember checking the newspaper for movie listings. I remember reading Saturday morning comics. I remember playing gameboy tetris and thinking it was the most amazing thing ever. I remember playing with a first generation Ipod and thinking how nuts it would be to have all my mp3's in my pocket. I remember laserdiscs. Walkmans. Minidiscs. Betamax. And I'm only 26 for goodness sake.
Honestly I don't know how senior citizens haven't all gone nuts yet when faced with modern technology. If somebody had given me a PSP when I was 10 I probably would have thought they were Jesus.
And don't even get me started on cell phones and GPS and all that other do-hickory.
To be honest though, I miss some of those things. Whatever happened to weekend comics anyhow? The funnies in general no longer seem to be a part of pop-culture, and that in itself is quite sad and worthy of its own post. This nostalgia has definitely reminded me that I am getting older. It doesn't help I've been playing a lot of SNES games lately.
To wit, a classic Calvin & Hobbes. The world is a worse place for no longer having this strip -- a reminder that not every step forward is progress.
1 comment:
Yea i dont understand how we survived without cell phones. Like if you got into a car accident you'd have to walk off the highway to the nearest shop and call 911. And like meeting up with friends would be so much harder.
Yea no internet would have been crazy. I remember the days when we had to go to the library to research stuff as kids. The last time i was in the library (not counting uni for "studying") was to use their internet cuz i forgot my cell phone and couldnt find some place hahaha, no joke it was sad and i ended up having to pay $1 to make 2 phone calls. payphones are 50 cents/call now! Craziness!
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