Inspired by this blog post, I decided it would be fun to write my own list of technologies and experiences that show my age. Most people wouldn’t consider mid-30s to be that old and it really isn’t, but from a technological standpoint, it might as well be millennia.
So, let’s dive into it. These are the things I remember using and experiencing for the first time that are now obsolete or have changed considerably since I first encountered them:
- Three-button mice without a wheel
- Single-button mice on Macs (without multi-touch)
- 20″ CRT monitors that seemed giant and would briefly dim the lights when you turned them on
- Crunchy hard drive noises
- The sound of a modem connecting
- Desktop computers that didn’t have enough power to play an MP3
- Upgrading to Windows 95
- Ghosting on passive matrix laptop screens (both color and black and white)
- Subversion was the latest and greatest code versioning system
- JavaScript had a competitor from Microsoft that only ran in Internet Explorer: VBScript
- JavaScript was sparsely used on websites
- JavaScript was only used in the frontend
- PHP’s first release
- ASP before .NET was appended to it
- Rounded corners on websites were achieved with images… most of which weren’t even transparent
- ColdFusion
- Macromedia Flash
- Guestbooks on websites
- Hit counters on websites
- The Netscape Communicator software suite
- Brushed metal and pinstripes were modern UI elements for Mac OS X
- Multiple cores meant multiple processors
- Separate math coprocessors
- Schools requiring kids to bring floppy disks to store their work from the computer lab
- America Online (“You’ve got mail!”)
- Firebug was a revolution in web development
- Creating websites with Microsoft Frontpage
- AltaVista
- When I got an invitation to join Gmail for the closed beta period in 2004
- Microsoft Encarta
- Web directories
- Blogrolls
- The fact that the Microsoft IntelliMouse Explorer had a laser instead of a track ball was an amazing feat of technology
- …and many more
The more I wrote, the more I remembered which is how that list got so long. I could have easily kept going, but decided that the list was long enough, so I stopped there.
It’s been a fun trip down memory lane and there are certainly things I miss about technology from the past, but mostly I prefer technology from the present.
What technologies do you remember using for the first time or that have died off since? Let me know in the comments!
