Technology Run A Muck! (Part 1 of a 3 part series)

My recent trip down memory recently took on a life of its own. You see, I have the coolest parents. My Dad is only eclipsed by me as agadget nut, and my Mom cruises the Internet like Tony Hawk rides a skateboard. Still, as I reflect upon times when I coded Pascal and executed said programs on punch cards, I sometimes wonder how receptive I will be years from now as technology continues to creep along. Already, I find myself resistant to the winds of change. Me! The Gadget Guy! Surely, I can't be the only one who holds “ancient” technologies in high regard? To test this theory, allow me, if you will, to go down memory lane on some of my favorite technologies that have...err...fallen out of favor—to put it nicely.

• Albums, LPs, & 45s
  - Aaaaah. Analog. When music was pure and Napster was just a disaster waiting to happen to the music industry. I used to work in a place called the "Turntable" in Willingboro, New Jersey. As its name implies, it was a record store—for you Gen-X’ers out there, a record is slab of vinyl that had music embedded on it before there was such a thing as MP3s...but I digress. As a young man, I spent every cent on buying records, taking care of them—storing them vertically, keeping them clean, and keeping them in a cool place. Records are like fine wine. Play a half-speed album on the best equipment through a Carver amplifier and only the best audiophiles could decipher distortion. But alas, records fell victim to CDs, the older, illegitimate cousin of DVD's, and soon only DJs cared to use them anymore. What a shame. Now don't get me wrong, I like CDs, too and I have acquired many more CDs than records if only because the storage is much easier. That said, there's something to be said for getting your friends together and doing karaoke to a nice Earth,Wind, and Fire tune that just doesn't have the nostalgia when you play a
  CD. Sure, the records occasionally have that "Snap, Crackle, Pop" that I love to hear in Musiq's songs, but that's what gives them character. How much character do you get
  from an iPod?
  

• 8-Track tapes -
  Okay...I'm dating myself here, but I did leave reel-to-reel playerss off the list! 8-Tracks
  were among the early random access mediums in audio...and when I say random, I mean RANDOM! Again, for the Gen X-ers, Audio is recorded in two tracks. The tape in an “8-Track tape” could accommodate four pairs of these and the players typically had a button that allowed the user to sequentially shift to the next pair of tracks. Hence
  the name. I used to have an Emerson boom box with an 8-Track player that could record!—a verrry rare find in the 70s. I'd buy blanks from Radio Shack and then make custom tapes for playing in the boom box or the car—yeah , some of you know what I'm talkin' about...you weren’t rolling in style if you didn’t have an 8-Track in your ride. My
  fondest memory of 8-Track tapes is from pressing the polished aluminum "Track" button on my boom box. The playback head would emit this great "Cha-chunk" sound each time the button is pressed and the next thing you know you're listening to Marvin Gaye instead of the O'Jays. “Cha-chunk!” Stylistics song—somewhere in the middle. “Cha-Chunk!”
  Stevie Wonder song, somewhere near the end. Several things worked to the 8-Track's demise: First of all, the problem with the 8-Track was that you never knew for sure what section of a song you would end up in when you heard that "Cha-Chunk" sound. Secondly, while many people with Classic Cadillacs had 8-Track players, very few were able to record an 8-Track tape. I suspect the music moguls liked the idea of controlling the medium, but technology ultimately sank this bad boy. That technology was—surprise—cassette tapes!
  

• Cassette tapes - Whew! Ladies and gentlemen, we have reached the 80's! Cassette tapes flew off the shelves and spawned the SONY Walkman because consumers now had better
  quality in a smaller package and you could custom record your own Tom Joyner anthology at a reasonable cost--*Note to record industry: Are you listening? Good. Quit schlepping lousy acts and one-hit wonders, and quit asking $18 for a CD that we know
  costs less than a couple of bucks to mass produce. Back to Cassettes. The problem with cassettes were they were...well...predictable. Allow me to elaborate. Listen to a side, flip
  the tape, listen to the other side. Over and over and over again. Like 8-Tracks, after you listened to the same tape a few times, the monotony drove people crazy. Manufacturers
  countered with the 80s-version of commercial-skip. The better players could fast-forward to the next blank space in the tape—but if you mixed your songs together, there were no blank spaces to fast forward to! Then along came technology that put the cassette in the grave: Compact Discs (or CDs).
  

Whoa! Look at the time!—I blinked an 90 minutes just zoomed by! More to come down memory lane in part 2, and I've got some predictions on things we use today that (I think) are on a short roadto obsolescence....the list may surprise you!
Peace,
+THINKER