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Ben Halpern
Ben Halpern

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Remember phonebooks?

I’m old enough to remember what things were like before the Internet, but young enough to have mostly grown up with it.

It has been an interesting time to see the Internet pick things off one by one.

Phonebooks will be technical artifacts that will be hard to even describe to future generations.

What other technology/practice vanish without much fanfare?

Top comments (46)

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bertilmuth profile image
Bertil Muth

I remember all the coordination that was required to just meet somebody somewhere, especially at an unknown location, in the pre mobile phone era. Also, looking at real maps and asking people for directions in cities we visited on vacation when I was a kid.

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katiekodes profile image
Katie

I miss people asking me for directions. I’m kinda proud of my skills!

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katiekodes profile image
Katie

I don’t, however, miss struggling to get places or to follow directions.

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ben profile image
Ben Halpern

I’m sooooo bad at giving directions.

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katiekodes profile image
Katie

I am, however, bad at navigating. “Oh! Sorry! That was the turn!”

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ben profile image
Ben Halpern

I had a whole day taken up by trying too meet up with a friend to take a bus somewhere.

We completely missed our whole appointment because we couldn’t communicate.

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deciduously profile image
Ben Lovy • Edited

Microsoft Encarta seems quaint now

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thomasthespacefox profile image
Thomas Leathers

Ah, interactive CD-ROM encyclopedias. Once they seemed so futuristic and advanced. Now they look even more quaint than the CD-ROMs they came on.

Though we all know what put and end to Encarta & friends: Wikipedia, search engines, & the rest of the internet.

also, remember that weird castle-themed quiz game it came with for years?

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deciduously profile image
Ben Lovy

Whoa, I haven't thought about that game years and years

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xowap profile image
Rémy 🤖

I remember very well the year 1999. It was in the first week after the release of Star Wars I: The Phantom Menace. At the time I didn't even know what an email address was. For some reason, my dad took me to this kind of exposition in the basement of a theater.

That's the first time I actually got on the Internet. I had no fucking clue of what I should do. I didn't even know the keyboard layout very well because I didn't have a computer. At the time in France we used something called the Minitel which was a remote terminal to display content generated server-side, through the phone line.

In this exposition I saw:

  • Computers with an Internet access
  • A VR headset which allowed you to visit a car
  • A 3D scanner which took a 3D picture of your face (you could then edit it on the computers)
  • A 3D printer which printed your face into wood

20 years later I'm still amazed by the vision those people had. They gathered a set of technologies that would take decades to go mainstream. All of that in a basement.

All right that's off-topic but that's what I think about when I read this testimony :)

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imthedeveloper profile image
ImTheDeveloper

America online.... AOL stacks of their CDs and running at least three of their subscriptions at any one time because I would forget my login details but I had a gold cd I could just use.

Ultimately these CDs became a place for me to rest my hot drink on top of but the whole AOL experience and that moment of being connected to the internet will actually be missed

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Anna Simoroshka

Cassette players and VHS. I kinda miss them.

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ben profile image
Ben Halpern

It’s kind of crazy that we don’t physically own our media anymore.

I used to own Independence Day with Will Smith. Physically, in the room.

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thomasthespacefox profile image
Thomas Leathers

Must be partly why vinyl records have made a comeback. its a very 'real' medium. no bits nor servers, just a needle running in a grove.

Its funny, what once was people's goto music format, is now made as a novelty for collectors. Ive noticed this seems not limited to music, as quite a few indie developers have released games for old systems on actual cartridges for example.

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david_j_eddy profile image
David J Eddy

I still enjoy purchasing physical media entertainment. If nothing else for the "...when X provider no longer has the license to stream it..." event.

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Kevin McGinn

Much to my wife's chagrin, I am into collecting Blurays of movies I like (and all of Game of Thrones). We still stream a lot of stuff, but it doesn't always hit the consistency of a good 4k disc.😊

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Mark Nicol

We had to explain what a fax machine was to our eldest a while back.
Things I don't miss. Leaving messages with your friends parents or siblings because there is one family phone.

Having to note down things on random scraps of paper rather than being able to take a photo. In fact just not being able to take photos because you don't have your camera with you altogether.

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jacoby profile image
Dave Jacoby

In the 90s, there was a series of ads where they would show a series of near-future things, like a travelling mother saying goodnight to her child via camera-phone, or classrooms of children having electronic "pen-pals" on another continent, ending with "And the company who will bring it to you is AT&T".

The last of the pieces that needed to come true was one I tracked down recently where a rebellious-looking young man, dressed like Bender from Breakfast Club, walked through a grocery store shoving things into the pockets of his huge great coat, and when he walked out, the security guard yelled out "You forgot your receipt!" That one, fully automated checkout, is the central idea to the Amazon store.

And the company that is almost out of the loop as anything but cell carrier these days is AT&T.

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cychainey profile image
Cy Chainey

The dictionary. A single place to check spelling and definitions seems so weird now, especially with autocorrect the defacto behaviour of so many apps.

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cdw9 profile image
Chrissy Wainwright

Books in general. I went into Walmart a few months ago searching for bookends. I had to explain to four separate employees what I was looking for. After a search online for what they had in stock in that store, there was only a set that was shaped like a bicycle.

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Elliot Derhay

I may be in that age range too (though possibly on the younger end of it). My family didn't have internet until I was at least 10, though we were relatively slow tech adopters anyway.

As for your question, would typewriters fit? And probably Rand McNally atlases. My dad taught me how to read those for whenever we had family vacations. I would be his copilot on the drive as a kid.

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ohffs

I remember programming back in the 80s (yes, I know I'm old - thanks ;-) and we used to have to post, in the physical mail, floppy disks with sourcecode to one another across Europe to see what we were working on.

It was actually kind of exciting getting an envelope from somewhere 'exotic' like Sweden in the post and seeing what people were doing :-)

Also - having one phone in the house, usually in the hallway, that had a notepad (for missed call details etc) and paper addressbook next to it. Ah, the olden days... ;-)

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bertilmuth profile image
Bertil Muth

I did the same in the early nineties. We declared the letters as books to save stamp money :)

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jacoby profile image
Dave Jacoby

I have a desktop computer at work. In fact, two. I work in science, and the data-providing instruments talk to desktops, mostly in Windows. But most of what I actually do could be done with an iPad with a BT keyboard. Already, we're moving to the extremes -- smaller screens that show us the results, and big cloud-y machines off somewhere like US-EAST-1 doing the work -- and the personal desktop machine is increasingly more trouble that it's worth.

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david_j_eddy profile image
David J Eddy

Heading back to mainframe and terminal style regional infrastructure.

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nickytonline profile image
Nick Taylor • Edited

A bunch that I relate to have already been mentioned but a couple others are phone booths/pay phones. I can only think of one that I know still exists à Montreal. I'm sure there's others, but they're definitely a rarety.

Any old media for the computer: floppies 3 1/2" and 5 1/4", iOmega Zip drives/disks.

Ordering music CDs by mail from Columbia House. (Just a Canadian thing?)

Dial-up Internet that is implied by other comments like using America Online.

Going to the library and going through countless drawers of cards to find a book.

Physical encyclopedias. The list goes on...

Almost forgot to mention the Nintendo Power Glove.

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david_j_eddy profile image
David J Eddy

"...Ordering music CDs by mail from Columbia House. (Just a Canadian thing?)..."

United States thing as well. :)

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Nick Taylor • Edited

I stand corrected. I'm going further on a metro line I take and I'm seeing payphones or two at each station. 📞 🤷‍♂️

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computersmiths profile image
ComputerSmiths • Edited

I was the official 8” floppy distribution for Xmodem for CP/M back in the day when anyone knew what that meant. 🤓

Party line telephones

Dial phones

Maps and map books for the car.

Wind-up (then self-winding!) analog mechanical watches.

Incandescent bulbs.

Wire-wrap

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roger-01

My mom still believes in keeping Phonebooks.
I think as generations pass human culture will witness evolution.

I remember trading Game CD's with my friends, and asking people for directions those days are long gone now, along with the days when Humans were more social in real life.