something new and something best forgot
- December 30th, 2011
- Posted in polls . shows
- Write comment
NOW IT CAN BE TOLD: Kräken-Röhl, CRIME and the Forces of Evil, and Leannan Sidhe, Live at B-Side Music, January 27th! Doors 6pm, shows start 7pm, more info on the show page and after that to come! 😀
NOW IT HAS BEEN FORGOT: Over on Twitter, Attoparsec‘s Matthew Dockery mentioned clearing out the old CRT computer monitors, and being glad of it. I replied that it’s funny how CRT monitors have no loyalists or preservationists, certainly not of any scale, unlike computers themselves, and vinyl LPs, and to a lesser extent CDs, the like.
It’s me, too; I have a couple of old Amiga CRTs I’ve held onto just in case, and even I want to get rid of them.
And that got us talking about old technologies without fandoms. Examples include CRT computer monitors, and those wretched devices, the FAX machine. So we’re wondering: what other dead tech lacks a fandom?
The polling software I have doesn’t allow fill-in-the-blank answers, but I’m going to start a poll anyway. Add other suggestions in comments!
[poll=22]
Floppy drives. Actually, that can probably be expanded to all removable media (8″, 5.5″, and 3.25″ floppys, zip drives, seagate removable hard drives, etc.).
Though on the subject of a lack of fandom for CRTs, may I present [Cathode][1], probably my favorite terminal interface for the Mac (at least in terms of nostalgia, design, and amusement, if not in terms of usability).
[1]: http://www.secretgeometry.com/apps/cathode/
Iiiiiii’m not sure. Certainly not all removable media, because as a class, that’s still very much in active use. (SDHC, thumb/USB drives.) I can maybe accept floppy drives as standalone devices – but they’re very much preserved as part of old computer systems. Emulators support virtual floppies, all that.
Most of all, a lot of the emulators make the drive noises. Completely unnecessary and total nostalgia.
That said, I’ll add it to the list. DISCUSS!
Cassette tapes. All the poor sound quality of vinyl (or low-quality MP3) combined with all the lack of decent cover art of CDs, plus lack of robustness in the presence of magnets or being left in a hot car, plus extra-special lack of… what’s the technical term for being able to find a particular track without having to fast-forward or rewind through a whole side?
Vinyl had excellent sound quality with sufficiently good equipment. (Yes, I can still demonstrate.) Cassette could be made reasonable once you got to chromium dioxide or metal tape, and home taping off good sources. But yeah, commercially-produced audiocassettes were always total ass.
And I was really good at all of this and I don’t miss it either. CHECK!
8-track, SCII Buss, RS232, parallel ports. hard-sectored floppies.
Some of these are kinda picayune – but how about dial-up instead of RS-232? Nobody misses dial-up. And 8-Track. Nobody misses 8-track. 😀
I still use and prefer my big HP crt monitor. 8-track was the Devil.
@stevegallacci: There have been a few other defenders of CRTs over on Livejournal, too. I’m surprised!
Nobody’s defending fax machines or 8-tracks tho’. XD
http://solarbird.livejournal.com/1074843.html
My lady suggested pagers. I’m thinking adding old cell phones to the list as well. (Then again, there’s a meme circulating re:new phone hits floor phone breaks – old phone hits floor, floor breaks, so maybe there’s fans after all…)
Pagers! Good call. (ar ar ar ar ar ar ar ar) Old cellphones not really valid, I think – even very simple phones are still being made, after all.
CRT’s. If you disassemble them and take the evil tube itself out (I’m convinced the unshielded ones gave me and many of my generation ThyCa) they make great kitty cubbyholes… 🙂 but CRT’s must die. Besides, they’re power hogs.
@GlennS Very few fans. But not quite zero, it turns out. Not like fax machines. Nobody has piped up in defence of those.
CRTs. And dot matrix printers.
We still use pagers where I work, and my boss dictates letters on a handheld cassette recorder. (He’s a great guy, but just a wee bit old-fashioned.)
@Damiana So you’ve got a job in the 80s, then? There are worse fates. You still have that dot matrix noise! briiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiit fsssssss briiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiit fsssssss briiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiit fsssssss nnngnnngnnngnnngnnngnnngnnngnnngnnng CHONK 😀