Out of date, out of sight

The pace of technology in the past 2 decades has been so frenetic that many of the latest inventions remain in vogue just as long as celebrity marriages last. In fact this rapid advancement in technology has been taking place at an increasingly exponential rate and as a result when a new gizmo comes out, by the time you open the manual the gadget is usually rendered obsolete. Nowhere is this phenomenon so prominent as that of the PC industry. Everytime I install the much talked about latest upgrade, the moment I try to boast about it to my cronies I learn that my upgrade is about as relevant as a tilting wet-grinder in a bachelor's kitchenette.

At times though, I often look back to those good old days when these very same obsolete gadgets used to fill everyone with awe and wonder. Though I cannot supress a chuckle, I realise that back then life was largely uncomplicated and relatively stress free. In one of my retrospective moments I tried to list some of those items that have been fast tracked to antiquity.

1. Mail:

These days this term doesn't mean anything other than e-mail, but there was a time when mail actually referred to letters that were delivered in hand by the postal department. Ofcourse now that the term has been hijacked by its electronic counterpart, it has been rechristened "snail mail". In those days if you mailed a letter from Chennai to Bangalore you could actually reach the garden city ahead of the posted letter even if you travel on the back of a drunk hippopotamus. Consider the following snippet of conversation taken from an anonymous chatroom:

marco: Hi there
pinky: Hello
marco: a/s/l ? (age/sex/location)
pinky: 17/f/Auckland
marco: cool
pinky: you?
marco: 17/m/Paris

Now ofcourse in reality marco and pinky would probably be 2 bored balding middle aged men (like Harsha Bhogle and Charu Sharma), hiding behind the anonymity afforded by the internet. But lets assume that the conversation is actually between a pair of teenagers. Now if they had to use the services of the postal department to carry out the above conversation, by the time pinky's message of "17/f/Auckland" reached marco, she would have enough time to become a "27/m/Mars".

2.Telephone:

Modern telephones have become snazzy gadgets capable of doing a wide variety of things apart from their basic function. But back then the only type of telephone was the gigantic rotary telephone that looked like it belonged to the Hyder Ali period. Dialing on it was a sore task that required the same effort needed to turn a giant Ferris wheel. And the worst part was when you had to redial the whole number again. By the time, the connection was established you could grow a beard and a pony tail too. Kudos to the man who invented the redial button. He sure saved a lot of people from being driven to madness.

3. Radio:

When I was a kid the mornings in the house were always filled with the blaring music from the "Murphy" transistor radio we possessed. The device had only two volume levels. One was total silence and the other was loud enough to match the sound of 100 rock bands playing together in a room the size of a prison cell. And the sheer size of the instrument was such that one would not be amiss if he mistook it for a mini nuclear reactor. In fact if you twiddled with the dials long enough you could raise Mars even.

4.Modem:

Nowadays when we talk of modems we refer to the dsl modem or the cable modem or in case of a dialup connection we talk of the 56kbps modem. But how many of you remember the 14.4kbps dialup modem that came out initially. I really pity the souls who had the unfortunate experience of dealing with this one. In fact it was reported that when President Kalam took office two and a half years ago, he discovered to his amusement that Rashtrapathi Bhavan had only a 14.4 kbps connection. Imagine his plight if he tried to conduct video conferencing using that modem. Prez Kalam could type in the url of Yahoo.com and by the time the site banner was loaded his 5 year term in office would have come to an end.

There are undoubtedly many more such items that can be listed in the above category. While these devices have put us to a lot of hardship in the past, I for one wouldn't mind using them now and then for old times sake. Nostalgia is indeed a powerful feeling!