100 Things your kids may never know about

[Shuley]

100 Things Your Kids May Never Know About



There are some things in this world that will never be forgotten, this week’s 40th anniversary of the moon landing for one. But Moore’s Law and our ever-increasing quest for simpler, smaller, faster and better widgets and thingamabobs will always ensure that some of the technology we grew up with will not be passed down the line to the next generation of geeks.
That is, of course, unless we tell them all about the good old days of modems and typewriters, slide rules and encyclopedias …
Photo credit: makelessnoise via flickr

Audio-Visual Entertainment

1. Inserting a VHS tape into a VCR to watch a movie or to record something.
2. Super-8 movies and cine film of all kinds.
3. Playing music on an audio tape using a personal stereo. See what happens when you give a Walkman to todays teenager.
4. The number of TV channels being a single digit. I remember it being a massive event when Britain got its fourth channel.
5. Standard-definition, CRT TVs filling up half your living room.
6. Rotary dial televisions with no remote control. You know, the ones where the kids were the remote control.
7. High-speed dubbing.
8. 8-track cartridges.
9. Vinyl records. Even today’s DJs are going laptop or CD.
10. Betamax tapes.
11. MiniDisc.
12. Laserdisc: the LP of DVD.
13. Scanning the radio dial and hearing static between stations. (Digital tuners + HD radio bork this concept.)
14. Shortwave radio.
15. 3-D movies meaning red-and-green glasses.
16. Watching TV when the networks say you should. Tivo and Sky+ are slowing killing this one.
17. That there was a time before ‘reality TV.’Photo credit: smin via flickr
    
    Computers and Videogaming
18. Wires. OK, so they’re not gone yet, but it won’t be long
19. The scream of a modem connecting.
20. The buzz of a dot-matrix printer
21. 5- and 3-inch floppies, Zip Discs and countless other forms of data storage.
22. Using jumpers to set IRQs.
23. DOS.
24. Terminals accessing the mainframe.
25. Screens being just green (or orange) on black.
26. Tweaking the volume setting on your tape deck to get a computer game to load, and waiting ages for it to actually do it.
27. Daisy chaining your SCSI devices and making sure they’ve all got a different ID.
28. Counting in kilobytes.
29. Wondering if you can afford to buy a RAM upgrade.
30. Blowing the dust out of a NES cartridge in the hopes that it’ll load this time.
31. Turning a PlayStation on its end to try and get a game to load.
32. Joysticks.
33. Having to delete something to make room on your hard drive.
34. Booting your computer off of a floppy disk.
35. Recording a song in a studio.Photo credit: ghbrett via flickr
    
    The Internet
36. NCSA Mosaic.
37. Finding out information from an encyclopedia.
38. Using a road atlas to get from A to B.
39. Doing bank business only when the bank is open.
40. Shopping only during the day, Monday to Saturday.
41. Phone books and Yellow Pages.
42. Newspapers and magazines made from dead trees.
43. Actually being able to get a domain name consisting of real words.
44. Filling out an order form by hand, putting it in an envelope and posting it.
45. Not knowing exactly what all of your friends are doing and thinking at every moment.
46. Carrying on a correspondence with real letters, especially the handwritten kind.
47. Archie searches.
48. Gopher searches.
49. Concatenating and UUDecoding binaries from Usenet.
50. Privacy.
51. The fact that words generally don’t have num8er5 in them.
52. Correct spelling of phrases, rather than TLAs.
53. Waiting several minutes (or even hours!) to download something.
54. The time before botnets/security vulnerabilities due to always-on and always-connected PCs
55. The time before PC networks.
56. When Spam was just a meat product — or even a Monty Python sketch.Photo credit: Chris Devers via flickr
    
    Gadgets
57. Typewriters.
58. Putting film in your camera: 35mm may have some life still, but what about APS or disk?
59. Sending that film away to be processed.
60. Having physical prints of photographs come back to you.
61. CB radios.
62. Getting lost. With GPS coming to more and more phones, your location is only a click away.
63. Rotary-dial telephones.
64. Answering machines.
65. Using a stick to point at information on a wallchart
66. Pay phones.
67. Phones with actual bells in them.
68. Fax machines.
69. Vacuum cleaners with bags in them.Photo credit: ansik via flickr
    
    Everything Else
70. Taking turns picking a radio station, or selecting a tape, for everyone to listen to during a long drive.
71. Remembering someone’s phone number.
72. Not knowing who was calling you on the phone.
73. Actually going down to a Blockbuster store to rent a movie.
74. Toys actually being suitable for the under-3s.
75. LEGO just being square blocks of various sizes, with the odd wheel, window or door.
76. Waiting for the television-network premiere to watch a movie after its run at the theater.
77. Relying on the 5-minute sport segment on the nightly news for baseball highlights.
78. Neat handwriting.
79. The days before the nanny state.
80. Starbuck being a man.
81. Han shoots first.
82. “Obi-Wan never told you what happened to your father.” But they’ve already seen episode III, so it’s no big surprise.
83. Kentucky Fried Chicken, as opposed to KFC.
84. Trig tables and log tables.
85. “Don’t know what a slide rule is for …”
86. Finding books in a card catalog at the library.
87. Swimming pools with diving boards.
88. Hershey bars in silver wrappers.
89. 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
90. A Marathon bar (what a Snickers used to be called in Britain).
91. Having to manually unlock a car door.
92. Writing a check.
93. Looking out the window during a long drive.
94. Roller skates, as opposed to blades.
95. Cash.
96. Libraries as a place to get books rather than a place to use the internet.
97. Spending your entire allowance at the arcade in the mall.
98. Omni Magazine
99. A physical dictionary — either for spelling or definitions.
100. When a ‘geek’ and a ‘nerd’ were one and the same.

​

 

[chaseter]

101. Getting spankings and physical torture. Long gone are the days of spankings and getting pinched or your ear tugged by your mother. Because today, your kids will call CPS and you will likely have a lawsuit filed against you because parents today are taught to use time out and that laying a finger on your kid is automatically abuse.

I will spank my kids

 

[Drizzle]

“Obi-Wan never told you what happened to your father.” But they’ve already seen episode III, so it’s no big surprise.

The hell they will! I plan on showing my kids the Original Trilogy first.

 

[Shuley]

101. Getting spankings and physical torture. Long gone are the days of spankings and getting pinched or your ear tugged by your mother. Because today, your kids will call CPS and you will likely have a lawsuit filed against you because parents today are taught to use time out and that laying a finger on your kid is automatically abuse.

I will spank my kids

So true. Yelling doesn't cut it these days,they need their mothers and fathers to punch them in the face all old school like.

 

[ttotheusher]

The hell they will! I plan on showing my kids the Original Trilogy first.

I second that. My kids are gonna watch it the proper way.

 

[The Squirrel]

Vinyl records are making a small comeback. A lot of bands are releasing vinyls of their new cds.

 

[amazingfantasy15]

Swimming pools with diving boards.

Swimming polls don't have diving boards anymore? I remember two pools I went to as a kid where the big attraction was the diving board.

 

[Majic Walrus]

I read this the other day... A lot of it is actually pretty sad. Low tech brings high fun.

 

[PyroChamber]

Whoever owns are those VHS tapes needs to open their own video store.

 

[chaseter]

Swimming pools with diving boards.

Swimming polls don't have diving boards anymore? I remember two pools I went to as a kid where the big attraction was the diving board.

A lot of park/play area equipment is long gone after tons of lawsuits and hurt kids. Seesaws are long gone, may poles, kid powered merry go rounds, and other tall structures.

 

[The Lizard]

The hell they will! I plan on showing my kids the Original Trilogy first.

My kids are going to have to find out about the SW Prequels on their own. They won't exist in the continuity of my household.

 

[amazingfantasy15]

A lot of park/play area equipment is long gone after tons of lawsuits and hurt kids. Seesaws are long gone, may poles, kid powered merry go rounds, and other tall structures.

Seesaws are gone?!?! How do the big kids taunt the little kids then? It was the only advantage fat kids had.

 

[Shuley]

I think diving boards and seesaws are gone cause of too many accidents on them. My only guess.The swings are next..watch.

 

[Colossal Spoons]

[19]The scream of a modem connecting.

God, makes me angry just thinking about it. Trying to sneak onto the internet while my parents were sleeping was like mission impossible

 

[Majic Walrus]

My kids are going to have to find out about the SW Prequels on their own. They won't exist in the continuity of my household.

Good move, Sir!

God, makes me angry just thinking about it. Trying to sneak onto the internet while my parents were sleeping was like mission impossible

That's what made it so fun!

 

[Immortalfire]

The hell they will! I plan on showing my kids the Original Trilogy first.

Very true. 4, 5, 6 are the way to go.

Seeing 1, 2 and 3 will be at their own discretion.

 

[Colossal Spoons]

That's what made it so fun!

I used to try smothering my tower with clothes, nothing worked

 

[E-Man]

I used to try smothering my tower with clothes, nothing worked

I used to flush every toilet in the house, and I'd run alot of water to make them think I was washing my hands. It used to work pretty well too. Especially when I needed to watch certain things in the VCR after night.

 

[Aesop Rocks]

Good thing I'm not having kids.

 

[Specter313]

God, makes me angry just thinking about it. Trying to sneak onto the internet while my parents were sleeping was like mission impossible

Heh, I was gonna say, that was is supposed to be a bad thing that they'll miss that? I always hated that noise.

 

[E-Man]

Good thing I'm not having kids.

You'll eventually need slaves to do your bidding.

 

[Aesop Rocks]

No sacrifice! No victory!

 

[Spidey-Bat]

The hell they will! I plan on showing my kids the Original Trilogy first.

QFT. Anyone who shows their kids Episodes I-III is a terrible parent. They might as well tell their kid "Snape kills Dumbledore" when they start reading Harry Potter.

My kids will know about the old video game systems. I have them and I think they're good to introduce kids to video games. They're easy to get a hang of and they're also challenging. They make games too easy now. And no, it's not just because I'm older. Even at 20 years old, Contra is still hard.

 

[bullets]

I agree. It's also important you teach your kids Han shoots first.

 

[SuperFerret]

101. Getting spankings and physical torture. Long gone are the days of spankings and getting pinched or your ear tugged by your mother. Because today, your kids will call CPS and you will likely have a lawsuit filed against you because parents today are taught to use time out and that laying a finger on your kid is automatically abuse.

I will spank my kids

This is cyclical in my opinion. The "new" trend of "don't hit your kids" is due to the adults in charge now getting beatings when they were kids. The younger generation who got the tail end of that is getting fed up with bratty little kids that don't get what's rightfully theirs will change that down the line, starting the cycle again.