Top 20 Things Kids Today Don't Recognize
#20: PalmPilots [PDAs]
Personal Digital Assistants, or PDAs, were essentially the first smartphones… only you couldn’t call or text or surf the internet… Okay, let us explain. If you wanted to do “complex” computing on the go, Palm Pilots were where it was at! They allowed you to store contact info, plan calendars, send and receive emails, write up documents – you know, computer stuff! The most popular of these devices were PalmPilots, which pretty much dominated the market. They were absolutely everywhere in the late ‘90s! But with the advent of smartphones, PDAs generally fell by the wayside, and even their attempts at smartphone versions couldn’t compete with the likes of iPhones or Androids. Unless their parents are tech buffs, we doubt today’s kids have even heard of them.
#19: Paper Maps
Yes, kids can (probably) tell what a map is. But hear us out: the ubiquity of apps like Apple Maps, Google Maps and MapQuest has made paper maps nearly obsolete. While kids today probably know what they are, they might be hard-pressed to actually read one if the need arose. Online maps can not only be optimized to filter in and out information, but they also feature directions and routes overlaid right on the screen, all read out by the sweet, accommodating Siri lady. If you’ve ever had to navigate using a physical road map, especially if you’re lost, you definitely know all about the unique ‘joys’ that come with it!
#18: Mail Order Netflix
Netflix is everywhere these days. It’s one of the biggest streaming services on the planet. But what many children today may not know is that Netflix began as a DVD delivery service. For a monthly fee, Netflix mails DVDs to your home in these letter-sized red sleeves. That’s in present tense, by the way, because they still do! For people who don’t have access to internet fast enough to stream, this is a pretty great option. And, for kids whose families do have access to high-speed internet, they probably have no clue about this side of the company or its origins.
#17: Church Keys
Keys to a church, right? Kids can figure that one out, so what’re we talking about? Not so fast though! ‘Church key’ is an American term for an older type of bottle opener. One end typically has a large loop for opening bottles--sort of like the large loops on old-fashioned keys. And sometimes, there’s a piercer on the other end of these bottle openers, which is useful for opening cans. If your family is comprised of avid soda pop or beer drinkers, there’s a good chance there’s one of these still lying around in a junk drawer somewhere. And, there’s a good chance it’s completely foreign to the little ones of the house!
#16: Rolodexes
Personal organizers are still around, sort of. While kids typically use school agendas, most adults keep organized with their favorite handheld device. Rolodexes, on the other hand, have largely ‘spun’ out of use. It was a spinning card organizer that held business cards or other contact info, that you could flip through to easily find the contact you needed. It was sort of like a phonebook, but with a lot more pzazz! At least it was, until digital organizers took over. You might come across one of these organizers in the odd workplace but, for the most part, the term “rolodex” just isn’t something kids need in their… rolodex.
#15: Test Pattern
Test patterns, or test cards, were signals broadcast on television when the transmitter was active but there was no footage airing. They might sometimes have been used if something needed calibration or general repairing. In most cases they were brightly colored and usually accompanied by a sine wave tone. (If you’re sitting there thinking, “hm, I’m not sure what a sine wave tone is”; trust us, you do.) These days, with the ever-evolving advances in technology, test patterns aren’t broadcast as frequently. TVs don’t require troubleshooting as often, and airtime is more likely to be filled 24/7. While today’s kids might recognize the display of a test pattern as meaning something is wrong, they won’t ever hold our trauma from that seemingly endless radio tone.
#14: Wired Video Game Controllers
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Again, we’re fairly sure most kids can figure out what a video game controller is, even with a wire sticking out of it! But they definitely won’t know the pain of perpetually tangled wires! Modern video game controllers are gearing increasingly towards being wireless, in favor of relying on battery power and infrared or Bluetooth, as opposed to plugging directly into the game console. It honestly wouldn’t surprise us if game companies stopped making wired controllers altogether at some point. While retro consoles would likely still require them, there probably won’t be a lot of demand for them from kids growing up on modern gaming alone. Nostalgia is nice, but not having to untangle wires is nicer!
#13: Cassette Tapes
While nostalgia – and some help from “Guardians of the Galaxy” – has promoted the recent revival of cassette tapes, there are many in the newer generation who didn’t get to experience them the first time around. Before CDs, cassette tapes were the go-to medium for playing audio. They work a lot like VHS tapes… which kids actually do know about. (At least that’s what they told us on our last list like this!) Cassette tapes play music and other recordings in a cassette player, and then need to be rewound, physically, to be played again. While they’ve largely been replaced by the modern smartphone, there’s still something special about a classic mixtape.
#12: Library Card Catalogs
Libraries in general are sadly seeing less and less traffic, but one aspect of their operation has also become nearly obsolete – card catalogs. Before computer databases, records of the library’s contents were kept in huge drawers full of cards. These listed all the books in the library and where they were located. Finding a specific book almost always meant [gulp] getting help from the librarian. While card catalogs are still around, either as a backup or in lieu of a computer database, most kids probably don’t know what they are, unless they’re in good with their local librarian.
#11: CD/DVD Storage Binders
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While CDs and DVDs are themselves becoming less common these days, even less well known to youngsters is one of the methods for storing them: binders – but not your school kind. These binders have sleeves, a little like photo albums, in which the discs are slipped inside. They can also be zipped shut around the border to keep the CDs or DVDs from falling out. It was a more compact way to store your music and movies than, say, hundreds of individual sleeves. Although storage binders are still around, the average kid doesn’t really have a need for them anymore. Their movies and music are mere clicks away! Video game discs might be the worthy exception though.
#10: Phone Books
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Quick: think of your friend’s phone number. Did you know it right away? Probably not, because these days, names and numbers are in our contact lists and a phone call is a button away. Gone are the days when you actually had to hunt down the person you wanted to call by finding his or her city and his or her last name in the phone book. You also had to look up businesses rather than Google the name and follow the phone number. In fact, it seems like these days, phone books are more often used as fodder to show off your inhuman strength than anything else!
#9: TV Guides
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Ah, the TV Guide. Yeah, even watching TV used to involve a lot more effort, as you had to look up each specific day, find out what was playing, what channel it was on, and plan your schedule accordingly. Before the internet, pirating and streaming services weren’t around to allow access to whatever shows and movies you wanted, whenever you wanted them. Not to mention that, now, cable boxes come with a guide that’s right there on your screen. Too bad though, we kinda liked seeing which celebrity was on the cover of this week’s issue!
#8: Rotary Phones
We’re going WAY back for this one. Even before push-button phones, there were rotary dial phones. They featured a finger wheel with holes that represented individual numbers. To input a number, you would put your finger in the corresponding hole and rotate the dial, which would then spring back to its starting point. Now imagine doing that again and again, for every digit in someone’s phone number. Unsurprisingly, they started going out of style in the 1970s, when touch-tone phones took their place. While there’s something tactile and satisfying about spinning that dial, it’s definitely time-consuming and a lot less convenient!
#7: Encyclopedias
Kids today may wonder what the row of identical bible-sized books titled “Britannica” are doing on their grandparents’ shelves. For those of us who didn’t grow up with the internet, we know all too well. Before the internet, books were the best (and only) standardized form of information we had. While many of us today use Wikipedia, the website is the humble descendent of encyclopedias far and wide. Although encyclopedias are still around, print versions are far less common than they once were. Even Britannica has moved online! And you definitely won’t see them being sold door to door anymore.
#6: Pagers [aka Beepers]
Until the early ‘90s, there were tons of different pagers on the market. But once cheap and reliable cell phones came along, these wireless telecommunication devices all went the way of the dinosaurs. Which, funnily enough, is what you’ll be called if you still use one. Alphanumeric pagers simply displayed a phone number that you had to call back, while more advanced ones like the two-way QWERTY pagers could send and receive early forms of text messages. This is nothing that a cell phone can’t do though, so pagers are now the butt of ridicule.
#5: Portable Audio Players [Walkman & Discman]
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Walking down the street with one of these bad boys brought an instant feeling of cool. Looking back … weeell hindsight is 20/20! A Walkman or Discman is a portable audio player – with the former for cassettes and the latter for CDs - that would sometimes fit in your pocket. If we’re talking a Walkmen, then we’d have to deal with turning over the cassette tapes once you reached the end of one side. When it comes to a Discman, it would seem that it always started skipping at the most inopportune times because... well, they sucked. In reality, these portable music players were usually bulky and inconvenient, AND there was no shuffle on a cassette, so you’d better have made a really good mixtape.
#4: Fax Machines/Telecopiers
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Ask anyone born after 1990 if they’ve ever owned or even just used a fax machine, and the answer will probably be a resounding ‘no’. Faxes, short for facsimiles, and sometimes referred to as telecopying or telefax, are images transmitted through a phone line and then printed out. Prior to the rise of email, fax machines were the fastest way of transmitting printed information over long distances. Although fax machines still see some use in the business world, to a lot of kids today, they probably just look like a printer with a phone mysteriously attached.
#3: [Developing] Photographic Film
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Even today, there’s a lot of people who love shooting on film. But digital cameras definitely dominate the market. For some kids, used to pointing and shooting and sharing their photos straight away, it must seem bizarre that back in the day, you’d have to choose your shots carefully, to avoid wasting film, and wait for them to be developed. And you wouldn’t know how your pictures turned out until you got them back. Only then would you realize that the flash or some other setting had ruined half your masterpieces!
#2: Dial-Up Internet Access
Isn’t it amazing that you can watch this video in HD without having to suffer through buffering or having to make a sandwich while it loads? Yeah, this was absolutely not possible in the 1990s. Thanks, broadband! Back in the day though, we once had dial-up internet access, which would make an awful, mechanical noise while it connected to an internet service provider and would be painfully slow when you actually got online. And God forbid your mom needed the phone, because if she did, it was back to the TV for you. As of 2013, only 3% of internet users still use dial-up. We feel for you.
#1: Floppy Disks
Today, the floppy disk lives on as the icon you click on when you want to save your file. But few kids would actually be familiar with the object itself. In fact, one viral Tweet even wondered why the save icon is a “beverage dispenser”. Prevalent in the 80s, the floppy disk was the precursor to CDs, memory cards, and flash drives. There was the 8 inch, the 5¼-inch, and then the 3.5 inch disk, which could hold an astounding 1.44 MB of data! That’s pretty crazy considering there are thumb drives today that can hold terabytes of information. Maybe in a few years, we’ll be laughing at our measly terabyte flash drives… who knows?
