The types of problems we deal with depend on the times we live in. 15 years ago, something as small as it taking forever to download a file on the internet or watching the Red Ring of Death appear on your Xbox 360 could ruin your day. But these problems simply disappeared with time because trends and technology have changed so much.
Read on for a list of problems most of us faced way back in school that almost nobody cares about now—from scratched CDs to your iPod running out of juice (which is still a problem for me personally). Scroll down, upvote your faves, and let us know in the comments which of these problems were the most annoying for you.
Tech has changed loads in the last decade and a half. Think about just how important smartphones are in our lives right now: you no longer need a separate cell phone and MP3 player. What’s more, the internet for your phone is incredibly cheap nowadays. I think that nobody's nostalgic about the prices of mobile internet in the mid-2000s.
(h/t BuzzFeed)
This post may include affiliate links.
Yes, and if you were lucky you wouldn’t break a toe or trip over the sofa cushions some dope had put on the floor for their seats.
Meanwhile, most of us can no longer wrap our heads around activities like renting a movie at your local store (instead of turning on Netflix) or waiting for 9 PM to call somebody because it’s cheaper that way (instead of calling them whenever we want because calls are cheap).
Bored Panda spoke about the fast pace of technological change with Ramona Pringle, Director at the Creative Innovation Studio and Associate Professor at the RTA School of Media at Ryerson University.
“Technology advances exponentially, not linearly,” Pringle said. “We tend to think of the world linearly: that what happened the year or decade before is an indication of what to expect in the next year or decade. But in fact, change happens at an ever-increasing pace because one advancement builds upon the last.”
Removing the faceplate of your car stereo so it wouldn’t get stolen
Having to wait for your disposable camera pictures to develop only to find out you ruined them with your thumb
My sister does this or if not, she chops your head off when taking your photo. Sometimes, she does both
According to the expert, tech advances might not always be easy to see. “They’re not necessarily devices, but systems and software, and that might make it look like there isn’t as much change because there aren’t the new devices we’ve come to expect (everyone’s waiting for what comes after the smartphone)—but instead, advances in the power of what those devices can do.”
But what can we expect to change in the next decade or so? Pringle said that in her opinion VR headsets might go the way of the dodo. “Maybe it’s an unpopular opinion, but VR has had its chance, multiple times over. There are incredible experiences you can have in VR, but the barrier of entry remains too high,” she said.
My parents and I used to travel around Europe having no navigation but my mother holding a map in her hand ;)
In the UK the RAC used to produce in the 60s the most amazing detailed printed directions for travel. Took us from UK to Brittany, and UK to Switzerland with no problems.
Load More Replies...
That's how my boyfriend and I moved from Boston to Arizona in 1992! We got the route sent to us (spiral bound) by AAA before we set off on the trip
Load More Replies...
Lol I didn't even have a printer. My dad was a truck driver so we had books upon books of just maps of the country and opened that thang up in the car. Surprised those things didn't cause us to crash
I can remember having a computer and no printer, so I would write the MapQuest instructions on a sheet of notebook paper. It was GREAT - at least better than having to read an atlas on the road. What I'm saying is that we didn't realize we were living in the past back then. We thought it was the present (and right on the edge of the future).
Load More Replies...
When I delivered pizza back in the late 90s I still used a city key map i kept in my car. It helped ubtil theu started build more subdivisions. Id have to take directions over the phone and if I got lost I'd use a payphone at a gas station. God I love Google maps now lol.
I was a private process server in the late 90s. I kept every local map in my car and would write out the directions. When I went to visit my friend in Canada in 2006, I used Mapquest. MapQuest messed up at some point though and I was on my own. I ended up buying an atlas of North America to find the rest of the way there.
Load More Replies...
Is anyone else having PTSD flashbacks of being the navagator or just me
well... At least you had the directions written. Ten years before you, we had to use the map... Don't even think about lifting your finger from the map, or by the time you find where to look again, you'll have miss to intersections !
Some of us actually know how to read maps, and do so BEFORE we leave. smh
Try growing up with just am/for radio, cassette tapes & regular old maps.
Long before cassettes—-8 Tracks. Or just that AM radio. Remember late at night you could pick up stations from way out of town? When I lived in Raleigh, NC, and worked second shift at the airport (off at midnight), circa 1979-1980, on a good night I could pick up Wonderful WOWO from Ft Wayne, IN pretty clearly!
Load More Replies...
I think those were all not comments in all the articles, looks like they're all gone now
Load More Replies...
🤣🤣🤣 I am the map holder type but have merged into using gos maps....but hate that voice and s**t like take the 3:rd right in the roundabout: last vacation I tried to zoom in on the map/paper with the
Mapquest? I remember getting out the "paper folding map " days before and writing down the directions.
l did a driving holiday of the UK with nothing but a large print road atlas and a hand written list of what roads I'd be needing to turn down..had plotted my routes before leaving home in Australia..
Or the map, I'll never forget the fight between my mom and dad about a side trip on our way to Fla that my mom told him was only an inch out of the way. First time I realized his hearing wasn't real good...or he wasn't listening LOL
Maps are always a choice, if you know how to read one. It's a dying skill.
This was the exact reason we got our first GPS, since the Mapquest directions tried to take us on a closed road, the the turn that looked like an obvious detour ending up taking us on an ever narrowing switchback road up a mountain. I will never again have to do a 21-point turn to try to turn around on a gravel road on the side of a mountain ever again. Thank you, GPS!
Mapquest? Give me the Refidex so I can find out where the hell we are. What's a cross street? What street are we on?
My kids 6th grade teacher sent real maps and destinations points to find on the map as part of "quarantine" homework. The next Google classroom meeting was fricken hilarious! Not one kid knew what he had sent them let alone how to fold it back up!
We had something called Melways. Basically Melbourne-Ways. You had to look up the destination address in the index, find the correct map (eg 87), then grid number (eg F, 5), then work out where you currently were, and figure out for yourself the best way to get there. Damn I'm old, how did that happen?
Kids these days will never know the struggle.
Yeah and phones would only hold tiny amounts of messages so you’d agonise over which ones to delete.
“The headsets are too clunky, and the bulk of experiences feel too isolating. Even if you can log in and play with others virtually, there’s something about physically distancing yourself from the world that I think is off-putting to too many people for it to take off more meaningfully than it already has.”
Pringle believes that the work that’s already gone into VR development will be put to good use, but most likely in a different form. “Something easier to access, more accessible, and more user friendly. But clunky headsets? I think it’s fair to assume that they will feel as dated as clunky old car phones.”
Having to push buttons up to 3 times to get the letter you wanted.
I still have and use a flip phone from 2005. It doesn't do internet, and its pay as you go, but I only need it for texts and calls. Can also go 5 DAYS without charging.
Yes and it took about a year to load and when it did load it was expensive so you’d try and press ‘end’ but you’d get that ‘connecting’ sign for like 10 minutes so you’d have to pull the battery out. Frustrating.
Whether we like it or not, the world and tech are changing faster and faster around us. Entrepreneur Peter Diamandis told The Guardian that the pace of tech innovation is about to accelerate. A lot.
“I can palpably feel how fast things are changing and that the rate of change is accelerating. In the next 10 years, we’re going to reinvent every industry on this planet, but the change is one that is for the benefit of masses, whether it’s in longevity or food or banking,” Diamandis said.
The first cd i burned took all day, in a 2x burner, on a 486 pc. Windows 98 smh
“Communication networks, sensors, robotics, augmented and virtual reality, blockchain, and AI are all exponentially improving. But they are also being interweaved and converging: for example, AI with robotics,” he explained.
The entrepreneur gave some examples of what we can expect to see in the next decade, such as car ownership being a thing of the past and AI taking care of your shopping. Meanwhile, we might even be trying on new clothes in the mall with the help of Virtual Reality! It all sounds scary and exhilarating at the same time, don’t you think?
Nah, rolled up piece of paper or a cigarette filter did the job just as well.
Today's kids will never understand the struggle of trying to maintain coolness after the song you were singing to on your cd started skipping
This can still happen. Blu-Ray disks have such stupid disk holders in their cases that you have no option but to handle the disk. Grrrr.
I had the same one and broke the same way. Broken like Armstrong's career.
WAIT! it says scratches OF the CD not off! It will make a copy of the scratches! Don't do it!
Note: this post originally had 39 images. It’s been shortened to the top 30 images based on user votes.
How about cassette tape with pencil, floppy disc, printer dot matrix, phone booth with coin, phone with rotate dial number and etc? Damn I to old on this day 😄
Yeah some of these were a decade of two before 15 years ago.
Load More Replies...
How can a tin of processed meat be sentient, let alone have limbs and a computer?
Load More Replies...
Also, I remember the struggle asking my parents to buy a memory card for ps2 before the cloud technology
I stood on my memory card and broke it, 85% roughly through spyro 2. So so infuriating!
Load More Replies...
I'm 35 years old and I should consider myself a boomer then :D Sweet Memories
Well... I felt pretty young til i read this. Now, who can take me to the Walmart for my RC cola and Moonpie?
8-track tapes. When they went bad, no hope for a fix. I must have biked past thousands of them in the 70's & 80's!
I did half of these, and also the other half the kids in that generation didn’t do. Anyone’s tape player ever eat their favorite mix tape? Memorize the time of the track you listened to the most? Upgrade to AOL so you could message all of your friends at 11pm. Say up until 1am to to watch Smashing Pumpkins Tonight Tonight on MTV for the 8th time that day. Run out of minutes trying to talk to a friend you met from another state. Those were fun too!
When I first installed Corel Draw in my PC, I used it to make banners for our youth group and some schoolwork. I had to finish at night, and then send to print. The dot matrix printer would start actually printing about 4 or 5 hours later.
I thought this was going to be about getting AIDS, or marching against nuclear weapons..........
I bought a rebuilt HP printer in the mid 90's that printed only in black and took 20 minutes to do it. Yeah, I know, loooong ago.
We bought a rebuilt HP printer in mid nineties. It cost $600, only printed in black, and took 20 minutes to print one recipe.
Trying to call friends late night using a rotary phone. Those things were noisy. I had to hide under the blankets.
Some of these bring back childhood memories. How did we survive? :D
Most of this stuff is from my adult years. For my childhood you have to go back to vinyl records and 8-tracks, rotary dial phones, pong, b&w tv, and air raid sirens.
When I was in kindergarten, we still did air raid drills. That noise still creeps me out. In southern states, we now use those sirens for tornadoes, and they test them once a week. I hate it!
Load More Replies... How about cassette tape with pencil, floppy disc, printer dot matrix, phone booth with coin, phone with rotate dial number and etc? Damn I to old on this day 😄
Yeah some of these were a decade of two before 15 years ago.
Load More Replies... How can a tin of processed meat be sentient, let alone have limbs and a computer?
Load More Replies... Also, I remember the struggle asking my parents to buy a memory card for ps2 before the cloud technology
I stood on my memory card and broke it, 85% roughly through spyro 2. So so infuriating!
Load More Replies... I'm 35 years old and I should consider myself a boomer then :D Sweet Memories
Well... I felt pretty young til i read this. Now, who can take me to the Walmart for my RC cola and Moonpie?
8-track tapes. When they went bad, no hope for a fix. I must have biked past thousands of them in the 70's & 80's!
I did half of these, and also the other half the kids in that generation didn’t do. Anyone’s tape player ever eat their favorite mix tape? Memorize the time of the track you listened to the most? Upgrade to AOL so you could message all of your friends at 11pm. Say up until 1am to to watch Smashing Pumpkins Tonight Tonight on MTV for the 8th time that day. Run out of minutes trying to talk to a friend you met from another state. Those were fun too!
When I first installed Corel Draw in my PC, I used it to make banners for our youth group and some schoolwork. I had to finish at night, and then send to print. The dot matrix printer would start actually printing about 4 or 5 hours later.
I thought this was going to be about getting AIDS, or marching against nuclear weapons..........
I bought a rebuilt HP printer in the mid 90's that printed only in black and took 20 minutes to do it. Yeah, I know, loooong ago.
We bought a rebuilt HP printer in mid nineties. It cost $600, only printed in black, and took 20 minutes to print one recipe.
Trying to call friends late night using a rotary phone. Those things were noisy. I had to hide under the blankets.
Some of these bring back childhood memories. How did we survive? :D
Most of this stuff is from my adult years. For my childhood you have to go back to vinyl records and 8-tracks, rotary dial phones, pong, b&w tv, and air raid sirens.
When I was in kindergarten, we still did air raid drills. That noise still creeps me out. In southern states, we now use those sirens for tornadoes, and they test them once a week. I hate it!
Load More Replies... 