Got thinking

[postman]

After ordering The set of Likely Lads dvd yesterday.I got to thinking how far we have travelled in my lifetime.Shopping from home.My mum shopped nearly everyday at local stores.Leeds market friday.Dad went saturday for the meat and a bet.
Once you had seen a prog on telly two channels it was gone.
Now it can be seen on You Tube or i player.To me being a gadget numpty i am still in awe of technology.But my two teenage girls like all other don't blink an eye.And acually treat me like a dinosaur i think.I am forever asking how how how do i do this.Well whats next i wonder.

 

[BSRU]

I remember my mum going to the first Tesco's in my home town, she thought it was fantastic, little did we know it would become the giant it is today.

 

[Spinney]

Supermarkets opening on Wed - Friday evenings was great! It meant I didn't have to spend every Saturday morning getting the week's food shopping in (normally being at work when the shops were open).

Word processing... no more tippex or rubbing out typewritten words, or pasting bits of paper with the correction on. No more carbon paper...

 

[BigAndyH]

I remember when the first big out of town supermarket opened near to us - Asda in Tipton; it just seemed enormous compared to the "normal" supermarkets we were used to, and the first thing you came to as you went in was a chiller cabinet stocked with vast quantities of different brands of LARD. Did people really have favorite brands, could they tell the difference ? Presumably someone had done their market research and decided a selection of lard was just the thing to draw in the Black Country crowds.

 

[goo_mason]

Half-day closing of all the shops in the High Street on a Wednesday. Nothing open on a Sunday. TVs that you had to walk over to and push buttons on when you wanted to change the channel. Car doors that had to be opened with a key and locked from the inside by pushing down on the little golf-tee-shaped button. Going out to play with your pals instead of sitting in front of a computer screen all day. Having to run down the road to my Granny's house when I wanted to use the phone because we didn't have one. Using a public phonebox that reeked of urine if you were out somewhere and needed to call someone. Having to memorise phone numbers. Milk being delivered to your door daily. Having to wait 28 days for delivery of anything you ordered by post from a catalogue. Using libraries to look up information in reference books rather than using Google or Wikipedia.

 

[Night Train]

I used to write letters. I have just started writing letters again.
Phone boxes, zebra crossings without the zigzag lines, Sundays with no cars on the road.

I remember, in the 70's dad getting a Sinclair electronic calculator

And a Scotch portable photocopier that used a pink transfer film and heat sensitive paper.

My brother had an analoge Vodaphone that used 11 AA batteries and managed the company accounts on a Sinclair QL computor.

We were quite a techy, gadety family.

 

[Oxo]

Dad went saturday for the meat and a bet.
.

We bought meat on a Saturday at our local butcher who then kept it in his fridge over night. He opened his shop for an short tlme on Sunday morning so his customers could collect their meat and take it home to cook Sunday lunch.

 

[ColinJ]

Well, I can tell you that a lot of the older generation (your grandparents'?) certainly didn't travel far!

 

[gb155]

Don't forget " keep fit " car windows

 

[Beebo]

TVs that you had to walk over to and push buttons on when you wanted to change the channel.

Luxury, we had to twiddle the tuner on our black and white TV.

 

[thnurg]

Basic rule of thumb regarding technology (ages subject to personality).

Any tech that is around when you were born, or matures before age 10 is part of the normal way things are done.
Any tech that is invented between the ages of 15 and 35 is an interesting innovation and you may be able to get a career in it.
Any tech that is invented after the age of 35 is an abomination against nature and I will never touch it.

We just happen to live in the most technologically progressive age ever, so far. I like to think this does not describe me, but it may describe the majority. It certainly describes my Mum because she agreed when I mentioned it to her.

 

[Nigel-YZ1]

I saw my first computer at 11. One of the teacher's husband had built it from a kit.

I learnt my trade on the BBC Micro, and worked on machines that had promptlines and tiny memories. Programs came on cassettes. Graphics were built from block characters, communication was via 1200 baud modems.
Now there is the luxury and extravagance of Windows and it's ilk (not elk, that's too deer). The message boards are gone and the internet places various answers to anything at the dabble of a search engine.

I marvelled at how my grandparents saw the development of flight and space travel. Now in 25 years I've witnessed the evolution of the digital age.

Oh good grief, what do I sound like?...

 

[postman]

Flippin heck.Kilnhurst South Yorkshire.Just a stones throw from Rawmarsh my Dads home town.

 

[ColinJ]

I saw my first computer at 11. One of the teacher's husband had built it from a kit.

I learnt my trade on the BBC Micro, and worked on machines that had promptlines and tiny memories. Programs came on cassettes. Graphics were built from block characters, communication was via 1200 baud modems.
Now there is the luxury and extravagance of Windows and it's ilk (not elk, that's too deer). The message boards are gone and the internet places various answers to anything at the dabble of a search engine.

I marvelled at how my grandparents saw the development of flight and space travel. Now in 25 years I've witnessed the evolution of the digital age.

Oh good grief, what do I sound like?...

You sound like someone who grew up with advanced technology!

When I was a teenager, we got hold of a hand punch for punched cards. We wrote some software in Algol, handpunched the software onto card stacks, bundled them up, got in the school minibus, and were driven to the computer centre at Warwick university where we handed over our programs to be run during the night. The following week, we'd go back to retrieve the card bundles and pick up our printouts which usually consisted of "Syntax error, card 1, column 17" or something like that!

After a couple of months of trying, we'd eventually have a working program to find all the prime numbers from 1 to 1,000, or something equally trivial!

I remember having an intense argument with a schoolfriend after one of those trips. I reckoned in our lifetimes, we would see computers that would be 100 times more powerful than the university computer, they would be about the size of a suitcase, and they would only cost about £25,000.

He thought I was living in a fantasy world. In fact, we ended up with laptop computers more powerful than that within 30 years, that cost less than £1,000!

As for smartphones ... flipping heck!

 

[ianrauk]

Half-day closing of all the shops in the High Street on a Wednesday. Nothing open on a Sunday. (1) TVs that you had to walk over to and push buttons on when you wanted to change the channel. Car doors that had to be opened with a key and locked from the inside by pushing down on the little golf-tee-shaped button. Going out to play with your pals instead of sitting in front of a computer screen all day. Having to run down the road to my Granny's house when I wanted to use the phone because we didn't have one. Using a public phonebox that reeked of urine if you were out somewhere and needed to call someone. Having to memorise phone numbers. (2) Milk being delivered to your door daily. Having to wait 28 days for delivery of anything you ordered by post from a catalogue. Using libraries to look up information in reference books rather than using Google or Wikipedia.

(1) And the arguments as to whose turn it was to turn it over
(2) I still have this.