Take a Walk Down Memory Lane

The rapid advancement of technology has made the lives of people more comfortable and convenient. From the prehistoric period up to the current age, man has constantly utilized resources, knowledge, tools, techniques, and systems for a particular use or purpose, such in as solving a problem or performing a particular function.

In the current period of globalization, the needs of humans have become varied and the problems affecting their way of living have become more and more complex. Man has constantly sought the solutions to these problems and needs through the rapid advancement of technology.

In our own generation, we have witnessed how technology evolved from being a novelty and later on becoming a thing of the past. Remember the Nokia 3210 phone?

When it first came out, it was a craze because of the features which appealed to the young: slim casing, games, changeable covers, and customizable ringtones. Most of all, it has no visible antenna! Later on, more advance models came out and more competitors entered the market, which offered more advanced features. Now we have the smartphones and Siri, but I guess won’t be long before these will either be outdated or phased out.

Let me take you to some of the gadgets which were once a craze but now has become a piece of memorabilia.

Sony Walkman

Before the Ipods and MP3s, we had the Sony Walkman. The Sony Walkman is a low-cost portable stereo, which uses an audio cassette player and portable headphones. It introduced a change in music listening habits of people by allowing them to carry music and listen to music through lightweight headphones. Built in 1978 and marketed in 1979, Walkman is truly an influential piece of technology.

Diskettes

A diskette, or floppy diskette, is a disk storage device which was invented in the late 1960s. It is composed of a thin and flexible magnetic disk, which is its storage medium, and it sealed in a plastic casing. It comes in different sizes: 8-inch, 5.25-inch, and the more popular 3.5-inch. Floppy diskettes are cheap and lightweight, but this technology was outdated by other forms of storage devices which carry bigger storage capacities, such as CDs, DVDs, portable hard disk drives, and USBs.

Pagers

Before cellphones became a commercial success, there was the pager (also known as a beeper). A pager is a simple personal telecommunications device for short messages. It was first introduced in the 1950s and became popular in the 1990s. A person may leave a message or record a greeting in a phone number assigned to a pager and the paged person will receive that message within a few minutes. Pagers are still being used now, especially for sending messages where mobile phones cannot reach a user.

Angeli I. Serapio, Entry #9