Day 78/365: Technology Questionnaire

[nanila]

A number of people on my list have done this questionnaire and I’ve enjoyed reading their answers, so here are mine.

1. Did you have a cell mobile phone prior to your thirties? Did they exist?
   Yes, I did. But if you wanna talk old tech, let’s spare a moment to remember pagers. I still remember the excitement of getting a pager, and being able to

Comments

[daphnep]

I like your answers. Particularly because of the similarity to what mine would be re: time periods, but also because of the snark. And because you’ve made me really, really nostalgic for mix tapes. I mean, I don’t want them back per se, I just feel really lucky that my teen years were marked by the creation, curation, decoration, and meaningful exchange of mix tapes.

[nanila]

Heh, thanks. Mixtapes were such an important cultural phenomenon. I'm glad I saved mine, even though I don't listen to them. It's more of a mark of respect for the time and effort my friends put into creating them.

[hamsterwoman]

But if you wanna talk old tech, let’s spare a moment to remember pagers.

It occurred to me, partly through the meme, that it never even mentioned pagers, yeah. I never had a personal one (I wasn't cool enough for one in high school, I guess?), although I do remember seeing them around occasionally, and the 411 / 911 stuff.

But I did have a pager at work, before they started paying for cell phones as a default. It actually worked out, because my customers had pagers (a little later, alphanumeric pagers), so being on the same system was a plus. Of course, I kept my work pager until 2011 XP... when all five of us still using them got an email they were turning off the service and we should, like, join the 21st century and get a cell phone or something :P

I don’t know why FB doesn’t make this information easy to find. Oh wait, I remember, because FB sucks. Yeah, this was remarkably hard to find! (Apparently you can export something somewhere and it will have that info? But I didn't have to go to those lengths because I know when I

[nanila]

I get the feeling that the person who created the meme did not experience (as a teenager/young adult) the period in the late 1990s/early 2000s when a whole host of new media-playing and data-storing technologies briefly flowered and then just as abruptly died. For example: laserdiscs. They were SO heavy!

[meathiel]

Oooh nostalgia ... yes, the times of mix tapes. I miss those! :-)

I love my Kindle I have to admit. I'm glad to have it as I've been running out of space for "real" books - these days I only buy my favourite authors in dead tree version still.

[nanila]

I hear you. I don't buy many books any more either, for space reasons. I either borrow books from friends or the library unless I'm really sure I want to own a copy.