I came across a writing prompt recently that asked an interesting question: What outdated technology do you miss most? I thought about it.
Fax machines? No.
Dial-up internet? Definitely not.
Rotary phones or even those mobile phones the size of a brick (I never owned one)? Not even a little.
VCRs? Typewriters? Television antennas? Busy signals? Nope, nope, nope and nope.
Maybe I’m supposed to get nostalgic at this point. I’m an older guy, after all. I grew up with much of the technology that now sits in museums or appears in movies when the director wants to establish that the story takes place sometime around 1987.
But I don’t miss any of it.
I love technology. I love that I can do my banking at 2 in the morning if I want to. Not that I should be doing my banking at 2 in the morning, but I like knowing I can. I love that I don’t have to go to the bank to see if the wire transfer I am expecting has shown up yet. I don’t have to bring my passbook and have them run it through their machine to update it.
I don’t have to look at the clock and think, “I’d better get to the bank before it closes.”
The bank never closes.
I love that I can buy something online and have it delivered to my door within two days. I don’t have to drive around to six stores looking for an obscure item, only to be told, “We don’t have it here, but our location across town might. Let me give them a call…yes, they have one left in stock.” Now, I have to take one more trip.
Nowadays? Click. Buy. Delivered.
I love that if I don’t feel like cooking or grocery shopping, I’m no longer limited to calling the pizza place down the street. I can order food from all kinds of restaurants and grocery stores and have someone bring it to me.
Again, I don’t do it much. I just like knowing I can.
I love that I can work remotely. Not “work from home” as some unusual arrangement that requires special permission and an explanation to everyone in the office.
Just work. My closest client is two hundred miles away, and my farthest is on another continent. I can interview someone in Australia, and the internet connection is awesome. I can send a story to Europe or queue it up in WordPress for a client in California while sitting at my desk in Canada.
Nobody thinks that’s strange anymore. The only time someone may ask where you are is to ensure your convenience and theirs so everyone understands which time zone each person is in. Did you meet the deadline? Is the work good? Excellent. That’s what matters.
I also love that work doesn’t necessarily have to happen between 9 and 5.
If I want to work at 6 in the morning, I can. If an idea hits me at 11 at night – when I really should be sleeping – I can open my laptop and start writing. If I want to take Friday afternoon off but work for a few hours on Saturday, that is fine too – again, as long as I meet the deadlines.
I don’t have to wait until the office opens. The office is wherever the laptop is.
And can we take a moment to appreciate the fact that the busy signal has essentially disappeared?
There was a time when you called someone and, if they were already talking to somebody else, you got a repetitive beeping sound that basically meant, “Too bad. Try again later.”
That was it. Just beep, beep, beep. And if the person on the other end was on the phone for an hour, you had better be patient because you were out of luck until they got off the phone. You couldn’t even leave a voicemail on one of those external answering machines with what today would pass as a lousy sound. No texting – that didn’t exist yet.
Technology has also completely changed how we experience sports.
I can sit in Canada and watch a sporting event taking place in Japan or Australia with a picture so clear it looks like the game is happening across the street.
Huge television screens with brilliant color and multiple camera angles. Slow motion. Super-slow motion.
Drones flying over stadiums and courses, giving us perspectives we couldn’t have imagined a generation ago.
And long-distance phone calls?
I remember when calling someone thousands of miles away actually sounded like you were calling someone thousands of miles away. There might be a delay. The voice might fade in and out. And somewhere in the background there was often a strange sound, as though someone on the other end was gently crinkling paper into the receiver. I also remember the cost. Depending on where you were calling, it could run you several dollars a minute, and you tended to call after 11 pm because it was two-thirds off the regular rate. Even calling someone in the next area code, maybe 50 miles away, would cost you a dollar a minute at regular rates.
Today, I can talk to someone on the other side of the world, and they sound like they’re sitting in six feet away from me. Better yet, I can call and see them. For free – unless I want to talk all day, and then I upgrade to the paid model on certain platforms.
So no, I don’t miss outdated technology.
I appreciate what it did for us. Every fax machine, dial-up modem, and VCR was part of the journey that got us here. Remember two-head VCRs where if you paused it, you got those snow bands across your screen? Remember the size of VHS tapes?
I don’t want them back. Nostalgia has its place, but sometimes the good old days weren’t actually better. They were just old.
In fact, as I write this, it’s 12:35 on a rainy weekend afternoon, and I am doing some work because I took yesterday afternoon off. Technology and remote work have made that possible.
A writing prompt made me think about outdated technology.
That thought turned into an idea. And within minutes, that idea was becoming a blog post that I could publish immediately if I wanted to.
Just an idea, a laptop, and an internet connection.
What outdated technology do I miss most? Honestly? None of it.
