Tech history

[cosmolinguist]

I've seen a bunch of my friends do this and thought it might be fun.

 

• Did you have a cell phone prior to your thirties? I think I even had a smartphone before my thirties, though only just if I did.

 

• Did they exist? Before my thirties?! I turned 30 in 2011, just saying.

 

• Did you have cable when you were a little kid? You can't get cable where my parents live; we had to wait for satellite TV to become a thing. They got that...I think when I was in high school, but not long before I left. Only time I lived in a house with it; I only had a TV for a year or two of college and could never afford cable. And I haven't had a TV since then

 

• Do you know what 8-track tapes are? Yes. My dad had an 8-track player in the basement and my brother and I liked a few of them so we'd play Simon & Garfunkel, the Beach Boys, Bob Dylan, stuff like that.

 

• How about cassette tapes? Do I know what they are? Yes. I started recording my dad's records (with his help of course) onto tapes with my little Fischer Price cassette player when I was about three, and I didn't have CDs until I was in high school, so the time in between was filled with a love of music and thus dozens of cassette tapes.

 

• When did you get your first DVD player? Second year of college. I only had money afterwards to buy two DVDs, so for a while my collection consisted of Shrek and Memento. I still have that Shrek DVD, though the Memento one was stolen by a later roommate who insisted it was hers when it was definitely mine.

 

• Did you learn to type on a typewriter? I played on my grandma's typewriter but I learned to type in a combination of classes in fourth grade (on computers known as "IBM-compatibles" and we were told to call it keyboarding instead of typing).

Oh and I learned a little on this weird Pre-Computer thing which I got because one year when I went to see Santa you were sent home with a letter saying "I'll sure try to get you a [whatever you asked for] kid!" so that your parents knew what you'd said. Only I got must've someone else's letter who'd asked for a computer. I don't remember what it was I'd actually asked for but I never had any interest in computers. This thing did teach me a little BASIC, though, as well as a start on typing.

 

• What was the first computer you owned? My parents sent me away to college with a laptop; I think it was a Compaq? I remember nothing about it really.

 

• What age were you when you first got e-mail? Eighteen, because I got it when I started college. I still remember my e-mail address; it was the first four letters of your last name and then a four-digit number that I think was sequential. I actually recognized someone's LJ screen name as being in this format a couple years later and he also went to the University of Minnesota.

 

• Was the Internet around when you were a kid? Well, yes it existed but not in a way anyone knew about. The internet was a thing that happened to me a very little in high school, mostly at school (my mom didn't want it at home because she thought it was evil) and which I mostly found really dull. We had to pass some kind of test to get a "Internet Driver's License" when I was about 15 and I was like "Can I not take the test if I don't intend to ever use the internet?" and the teacher who was telling us about it was so baffled at that question; I don't think she'd ever been asked that.

 

• What age were you when Facebook, Twitter, Livejournal, and Dreamwidth started? I don't even know when they started but I started them...let's see, this Facebook account goes back to 2013 but I had one before that, managed to delete it and then got sucked back in by volunteering. Twitter I also had and deleted a couple of times; I think this iteration dates from 2015. LiveJournal I started in 2002, Dreamwidth I started in 2009 and used exclusively since 2016.

 

• What was the first printer you owned like? It'd have been an inkjet (they all have), but otherwise I have no idea. I don't care about printers. I can only tell you what kind I have now because I finally tore down the box for it a few days ago.

 

• Collegiate papers: typewriter or computer? Computer. But they still had to be printed out and handed in. I remember frantically e-mailing a prof to beg them to accept an e-mailed version because for whatever reason I couldn't get it to them by hand.

 

• How old were you when streaming came into being? ...I don't know. What kind of streaming? I think RealPlayer is the first such thing I can think of, and I'm pretty sure I was in college by then though if it was a thing in high school I wouldn't have known about it (we had 56k dial-up internet at my parents until about six years ago).

 

• What age were you when you got your first MP3 player? My parents bought me a minidisc player the first time I asked for an MP3 player for Christmas, and that was when I was in college, so it must've been early twenties? Actually I wonder if the first one I had was when I was living in Didsbury and working in Stockport; I had a tiny cheap one with really wonky controls, you couldn't always tell what song you were going to get if you tried to do something advanced like change the volume. It was my coping mechanism for the bus rides, especially going home in the dark almost alone. I fell in love with the Hold Steady via Separation Sunday by listening to it on that thing.

 

• Did you own a record player, cassette player, CD player, or MP3 player as a teen? I didn't own a record player but there was one in the house -- maybe even two for part of that time. I had lots of walkmans and boom boxes and I did get my first CD player as a teen. Not MP

 

• At what age did you start blogging on the Internet? Twenty.

 

• What age were you when the e-readers came out? I don't know when they came out, but I remember Andrew got one when we were living in our old flat (so between 2009 and 2014) because it was an early one that had a whole keyboard and could play music and stuff and he was so excited about it he said he loved it almost as much as he did me. The only time in my life I've ever heard him compare anything so favorably.

 

• How do you listen to music? Mostly on Spotify, either on my computer or my phone. Sometimes I still listen to 6music on my DAB. Mostly I don't listen to a lot of music; Andrew's usually got it playing if he's awake and when he's not I'm happy with the silence. Or else I play podcasts or audiobooks. But I do like music for when I'm writing (I just play random ambient music on Spotify then) or sometimes if I'm struggling to get things done: chores, getting out of the house, whatever.

Comments

[softfruit]

The first two DVDs bit takes me back to my equivalent phase where I was 16 and had a record collection I could hold in one hand. Kids nowadays will never understand...

[jesse_the_k]

I love your Sand7846@target.com email deduction story. In the first decade of email, it seemed like the rule was "Make it as hard to guess as possible." Perhaps they really were limited to an eight-character field?

Do you use an ereader or software on your phone?