Thursday, July 23, 2009

Typewriters, WalkMans, and Floppy Disks

Wired has an interesting article up by Nathan Barry, 100 Things Your Kids May Never Know About. It lists all kinds of stuff, like typewriters, that today’s kids won’t even encounter anymore.

Some of these made me smile in nostalgia (like # 86), others laugh out loud (# 31). I’m something of a dinosaur, which made this list all the more fun to read. I wrote my term papers on MS-Dos—wait, forget that, it ages me …

I’m almost done reading The Postcard, and it’s been a pretty good read. But I found a detail, one that made me wonder.

Jason, our main character, finds a postcard. The card has a clue on it: two lines that Jason describes as looking like they were made with a typewriter without a ribbon. Reading this, I wondered: would a 13 year-old describe it this way, and be able to identify it as being made by a typewriter?

I doubt it. And that’s nothing against today’s teens. Most of them are a lot smarter than I am. But certain things, like the ones listed in that article, are just history. Floppy disks, anyone?

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