Awww… we were so analogue back then!

Digital technology is such an ingrained part of most of our lives these days that I think we forget just how far it has come in our lifetimes.

We were once a very, very analogue people. Hilariously so. And every once in a while, just how analogue we were comes screaming back to me in a way that makes me feel very, very old indeed.

You want to feel old… hang out with a child

I babysit a friend’s fifteen-month-old from time to time and I find it fascinating that whilst this child’s life is partly a reflection of my babyhood and my siblings’ babyhoods (dummies, sippy cups, highchairs and cuddles), in others ways, it’s just so… digital.

Case in point: little Amy has an iPod and sound dock in her bedroom… and she actually knows how to use them. I recall that the height of cool in the eighties was the child-sized record-storybook combo where you read in time with the record, turning the page when prompted by a chime (or, if you were VERY lucky, the sound of Indiana Jones’s bullwhip).

You want to feel really old…

Clearly, the older you are, the more fodder you have to go on. My emailing, iPod-wielding father has come a looong way. He tells me he used to entertain his younger siblings after they’d all been sent to bed by putting a red sock on the light bulb and spinning his collection of six (vinyl) tracks on the suitcase-sized record player. (Alas, his career as a dj was cut tragically short when the suits in the living room smelled burnt sock and pulled his slot.)

We’re not changing so much as constantly upgrading our tools

In terms of the move from analogue to digital, I don’t think it’s possible to overstate the difference between yesterday — or yesteryear — and today.

But there is some comfort, I think, in seeing that as much as technology advances, it tends to stick to the same paths: we like music, so technology has made it easier for us to like more music, more often. Similarly, we like talking, so technology has made it easier for us to do that. As people, we aren’t changing that much — rather, what’s changing is the way we do things and the tools we use.

Hands off my calculator

My mum tells me that shortly after she and my dad married (so, mid to late 1970s), they were doing their taxes and needed to do some fairly extensive addition.

Having no calculator of their own, they asked a friend if they could borrow his. He agreed, but only on the grounds that he could come along to supervise use of his big, new, modern tool… the calculator. Can you even fathom someone doing that now?!

I share these stories more for a giggle than anything else — as I said at the outset, it’s not news that we’re becoming more digital with every passing second. But when you take a look back at the information highway, main streets and dirt roads behind us…. my god, we were so analogue it hurts.

Image credit: _phogra_ via Flickr, courtesy of a Creative Commons licence