10 Modern Technologies We Lived Without in Primitive, Pre-Millennial America

Pajamas Media ^ | 05/08/2014 | PAULA BOLYARD

[apillar]

How times have changed... I still think of VCR’s and VHS tapes as “modern technology”, but my niece who is 8 years old was over at my house and found a box of VHS tapes in the garage. She had never seen one before and didn't have the slightest idea what they were, when I tried to explain, she just looked at me strange and said “Why didn't you just watch those movies on Netflix?”

[Buckeye McFrog]

Besides all of the above, there was actually a time when cars didn’t all have air conditioning, power windows and locks, and/or remote entry key fobs with alarms.

My first car was a 1971 Pontiac. No AC. Had those little triangular shaped vent windows up front. No carpeting, just black rubber material like a truck interior. No emission controls. Meaning I could actually work on it without first having to remove 600 miles of cable and tubing. Crank windows and key locks. AM radio. My first major upgrade was installing an FM converter.

And I was damned happy to have it.

[BenLurkin]

ditto

[1Old Pro]

How about the evolution of ski equipment - remember cubco bindings and leather boots and 6 foot skis?

How about photography, from kodachrome to digital in just a few decades - amazing.

[1Old Pro]

TV’s

Just 10 years ago a state of the art Sony 30 inch weighed 200 pounds - now a 50 inch weighs 30 pounds and can be hung on a wall with incredible hdtv

[1Old Pro]

The most amazing change since the early 80’s has to be the internet, thanks to algor

[Sherman Logan]

I got a TI-99 computer one year for Christmas.

If you still have it, might be worth some money.

[RegulatorCountry]

If you think about it, air conditioned vehicles make all the annoying cell phone blabbering while driving possible. Ever tried talking on a cell in a moving vehicle with the windows down? Inaudible on either end of the conversation. Would people sit in the heat in their cars blabbing, in traffic or in their own driveways? Doubt it.

[pgkdan]

me too!

[P.O.E.]

What about the button on the car floor to turn on the headlights?

[P.O.E.]

I meant to say high beams

[SkiKnee]

I didn’t even have Cubcos! My first bindings were the “bear trap” type.

[truth_seeker]

Copy machine

Fax machine

[RegulatorCountry]

I’m just barely old enough to have been exposed to the stress fax machines caused in the office ... “we’ve lost a whole day, everything’s moving too fast!” lol. Same with FedEx overnight. Little did they know.

[kjam22]

Almost the whole history of mankind was without electricity. That’s amazing when you really think about it.....

[Billthedrill]

Mankind has had the wheel for ten thousand years. Mankind has had luggage since somebody first sewed a sack together out of an animal hide. So tell me this:

WHY DID NOBODY THINK OF PUTTING WHEELS ON LUGGAGE??!?

(Sound of hyperventilating)

[Boonie]

I bought a ‘70 Hemi Cuda in ‘71 when I returned from Vietnam...
Here is a 426 CI engine sitting in a small car and you could raise the hood and still see pavement beside the engine block...
Today, you could get a huge Cadillac with a 6 cylinder engine and not be able to see anything but cables, hoses, wires, and filters under the hood.

[Dagnabitt]

"White Privilege"

How did we ever live without it?

[Old Teufel Hunden]

"My first car was a 1971 Pontiac. No AC. "

We used to call that AC the 255 model. Two windows down and going 55 miles an hour....

[Old Teufel Hunden]

Okay, I can’t have been the only kid to have to climb up on the roof of the house to adjust the TV antenna when it got stuck as Dad was down on the ground telling me if it was good.