I took this photo in 1996. I was thinking about how different things were back then – technology wise.

Things that were analog in 1996 that are now digital

TV Signals – we had rabbit ears on our TV or cable. We were too poor to have cable.

Telephone calls – we had a phone number from the phone company. Now we have VOIP. Noone I knew had a cell phone.

Booking a plane ticket – we called our travel agent at 1-800-fly-cheap.

Photography – a roll of film was my only option.

Renting movies at Blockbuster – VHS cassettes at the video store or what was on TV.

Finding a restaurant – yellow pages or word of mouth.

Getting directions – ask, guess or read a map. My navigation was my wife.

Researching a paper – dig through the books at the library.

Banking – ATM’s or walk into the branch.

Radio – Tune to the station, not the satellite.

Music – CD’s or Tapes no MP3, M4a, WAV files.

Internet – Novelty websites loaded with a phone line going 28.8k per second.

Mail – You actually had to mail a letter unless you were on the cutting edge with electronic mail.

Money – Credit cards, cash or write a check. No debit cards.

Weather report – Watch the news.

Get the news – Watch the news, read the newspaper.

Texting – not invented yet.

Get a phone number – call 411.

Learn how to _______ – read a book, ask a friend. No YouTube to teach you anything you want to know.

 

Can you think of anything else? I’m sure the list is much, much longer than this.