Technology vs. Old School
In one of his blogs last week, P talked about the charm of looking up baseball box scores in the morning newspaper. This is a practice which has gotten lost in the midst of today's readily available, live-updating websites like ESPN Gamecast, CBS Sportsline, or best of all, Yahoo StatTracker. But yeah, his opinion is a feeling that I totally share... that even though I've gotten used to having all those Internet services, I kind of miss the good old days of opening up the Tribune at breakfast, going to each box score of every game involving one of my players, and mentally calclating how many fantasy points he got.
I was reminded of this because I have been waiting for a package to arrive via UPS, with my Pocket PC and SD card. Most of us who have ordered stuff online have experienced using a "online tracking number" to see where their package is. Well, here at work I just checked the status of my order on the UPS site, and it tells me that my stuff was shipped out last week from Kentucky, routed through Indiana on Friday afternoon, through Chicago on Friday night, and scanned in at Palatine Saturday morning. It also informs me that as of 7:02 this morning, the package was sent "Out for delivery", which I can only assume means that it should be on my doorstep by the time I get home today.
Well, the point of that story is that even though it's nice to know when your stuff is gonna arrive, it sucks that online tracking robs you of the old school way of doing things. Don't we all remember the times we would race home from school every day, full of excitement to check the mail and see if the stuff we ordered came that day? Even if it didn't, that just made the excitement build that much more for the next day's mail-checking time. The hype would keep building until the joyous occasion when the package finally arrived. Well, with online tracking, all those feelings of excitement are long gone.
Another subject I can think of that technology has changed is music. I have vivid memories of me and my sister patiently waiting by our radios for our favorite song to come on (such as "Achy-breaky Heart"), so we could record it on tape. Seriously, we would just sit there all day, with our fingers hovering over the "Record" button, hoping to catch the song we wanted. Then later we would compare each others' versions to see which one was the best. Now, with mp3's being easy to get, we have no need to do any of that.
The other thing I remember about tapes was all the rewinding/fast forwarding through songs, or how cool the "Auto Reverse" and "High Speed Dubbing" functions were. Sometimes, me and my sis would record the same song over and over on the whole tape (Tag Team's "Whoomp! There It Is" comes to mind), so we wouldn't have to stop and wait for the rewinding to hear the song again. Well, the rise in popularity of CDs made all that obsolete, with the convenience of forwarding tracks quickly and easily. And now, switching between songs or looping songs is even simpler with a few clicks of the mouse on Winamp. Sure it saves a lot of time, but I can't help but to think back fondly on all the hours we spent fooling with those stupid cassette tapes.
I'm sure there's a lot of other examples, but I can't think of any more right now off the top of my head. Plus I'm too excited to think or type, and I'll probably leave work early today so I can go home and play with my new toy. It better be there, or I'll probably end up writing a scathing blog entry on "Why I Hate UPS Online Tracking".
By the way, just because I talk about missing the old school stuff, doesn't mean I would ever give up the conveniences of modern technology to go back. I guess I just like reminiscing... yes that's me, an aging old man, looking back on the primitive '80s and '90s and scowling about how "kids these days don't know how good they have it". Join me in the elderly community!
