Ten years ago, I was standing on my deck overlooking Deering Oaks park in Portland. It was sometime before midnight. Tom Brokaw was on the TV in the living room behind me, talking about Y2K, and scenes from other countries who had already reached midnight were showing in tiles across the screen. Proof that our fears of technological meltdown were unfounded. But I was still looking out across the park, half expecting a riot or some bright, fiery flash or something to signify the end of a millenium. I know, technically it wasn’t the beginning of a new millenium, and our assigned “years” are pretty arbitrary, but if it was enough to possibly throw off the world’s technological machines, then it just might be worth hiding out and waiting for the impending doom.
That was ten years ago. Someone just posted a #10yearsago meme on Twitter and it got me thinking. What everyday technological things was I living without ten years ago? Granted, I was on a tight student budget then, and I’ve turned into a bit of a tech-nerd early adapter, but I lived perfectly happily without some things that I consider vital these days.
— iPhone (mobile phone in general)
Nevermind the amazing and gorgeous computer in my pocket that I call iPhone. I didn’t even have a Nokia brick phone ten years ago. Sometime that year I got a wide, weird Qualcomm phone. I ended up ditching it because I couldn’t afford the service on my student budget and I had a land line. A land line. Weird.
— MacBook Pro
I didn’t even have an Apple of my own. My cohabitant and I shared a shitty Dell PC. I was only using it to write papers and occasionally check email or chat. I was in the design program at MECA then and had access to Macs in the studio.
— Adobe Creative Suite
Sweet merciful Jesus. Goodbye, Quark. Goodbye, Pagemaker. Goodbye, Freehand. Goodbye, clunky, crashy Photoshop and Illustrator 8.
— iPod A. this won’t become a list of Apple products that I lived without ten years ago. I swear. This is the last one. But seriously… I was walking around with a walkman ten years ago. Not discman, walkman. I had a discman, but I also had a lot of great mixtapes that I listened to on the way to work/school. The first iPod I bought allowed me to bring a giant swath of my music collection with me everywhere. I take that for granted every day. It’s amazing.
B. This also raises a reminder for me that the iPhone has taken on so many tasks. Pocket computer, email, phone, portable music library, tide chart, camera, etc… This whole list is becoming a list of things I can’t believe I take for granted every day.
—the internet
At least as we now know it. Back then 50% of it still looked like this fan forum. People were vehemently arguing in web design classes about whether Flash would be around for any significant length of time. What was once an occasional resource is now a constant part of my day, for better or worse. Just the introduction of the “social media” hubs has been nothing short of revolutionary. Not to mention the dawn of reliable web apps and online media storage. This year especially, I’m moving more of my data and my daily functions online. My day revolves around a computer, so it’s easy (and the iPhone fills in the gaps when I’m not next to a computer). When Google Wave finally catches on, I think it will make the online work flow even more streamlined and centralized. While I never liked the names Web 2.0 or 3.0, they were only trying to label change, and the internet is definitely a changed animal.
— digital camera
I didn’t get a digital camera until I moved out to Seattle in 2001. I take a lot of pictures, and I used to spend a lot of money processing film. I don’t really miss that. Especially now that I have a decent DSLR and I can actually take photos that look better than anything I shot on my Minolta x700.
I was expecting to feel nostalgic about tech of yore, but that’s sort of been overtaken by a desire to go tech-less for a week (or a month). When I started thinking about how much I sit at the computer every day, from email to twitter to writing this blog, my gut reaction was to be a little ashamed. My rationalization is that the progress of an increasingly technological and networked world will make my work easier and more convenient for fitting my own schedule. This summer, in a brief window of hacked iPhone tethering, I spent a glorious day at Kettle Cove,
working remotely from a sunny spot on the beach. For all anyone would know, I was sitting in my office. If more technology can make more of those days happen, I say bring it on.
See also: YouTube, Bluetooth, WiFi, 3G, MagSafe, The iTunes Store, and Affordable LCD Televisions.
This entry was written by , posted on December 31, 2009 at 8:26 pm, filed under Uncategorized and tagged nostalgia, technology. Bookmark the permalink. Follow any comments here with the RSS feed for this post.