Tuesday, February 22, 2011

The Way of the Dodo



I was packing some stuff when I came upon this ancient artifact. Chances are if you don't know what it is, you are of the MTV generation that never knew that MTV actually played music thus Music Television. Well if you're still baffled, it is a casette tape.

See before you had MP3 files, you had a thing called an 8 track. This was like a casette tape except that it was larger and you couldn't rewind or forward. Once you put in the Beatle's Revolver album, if you wanted to hear Yellow Submarine, you'd have to listen to Eleanor Rigby first. Things weren't so rushed then.

The casette tape was next. It could play songs and hold data on the tape but it had the added benefit of being able to record songs that you wanted! Could you imagine that. This made for creative rendition of songs. People would make "mix tapes" of love songs and give them to their love of their life. I know what you are thinking: People used to actually be romantic at one point??? Yes folks it used to happen. The tape also allowed you to record stuff on top of other songs but the more you did it, the worse the sound quality became. The downside included having the tape get tangled. At that point, you either did one of two things: 1- Become a technician and use your surgeon like hands to fix the tape or fling the tape into a wall cursing God,asking him to improve the technology.

The CD came next and it blew people's mind because now you would store more music in a smaller space and the sound was digital folks. The CD blew away the vinyl record. The CD was a record that was in a hurry and was a perfectionist. It was compact and it felt modern. It was metallic.

The next obvious step was making stuff smallers so the nerds got together and said, "what if we break down sound and just release the sound into bits?" This way you don't need a messenger;just the message which is sound. Thus the MP3 file was born and a guy created a site called Napster and the world was changed once again.

Technology is always moving forward to the next thing. I belive that in the future, you will just think of stuff and it will manifest. Call me Rod Serling. When I found this tape, I realized that I couldn't even find a player for it. My tape had become obsolete. It had gone in the way of the dodo, the dinosaur, and the typewriter. Just like the kindle is replacing books, self checkouts are replacing workers, the internet replaced encyclopedias(I'm ok with that one), and video killed the radio star.It's the way of progress.

Just this last few weeks an IBM computer beat the best Jeopardy champions. Don't be surprised when the host of Jeopardy is replaced by a souless machine that operates on "Xs" and "Os".

16 comments:

  1. Ha! I feel you on this! I am technology snob in some instances. The Kindle being one! I hate that they want to replace books! Books are the amazing! (yes, I love them) My mom still has her old 8 track player and I still have a cassette player. I just can't throw it away. And I miss the clackity clack of the typewriter sometimes. Don't lie, you know you made a few "love cassettes" in your time! :)

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  2. WOW Israel, I thought, I wish Israel would post again... and it manifested. Neat.
    I might have to get Jeff to read this one because we both have trouble understanding MP3's. We listen to CD's and think we are ALL THAT.

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  3. I was an 80s baby but I rocked cassettes all the way up until 2001 or so. I had the first and second Spice Girls albums on tape :)

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  4. I loved my old cassette tapes. The thing I struggle with the most is the fact that I still own a few VHS tapes, but I can not bring myself to watch them since the quality is so poor compared to DVD technology.

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  5. I can't lie...I STILL have my bobby brown cassette in my dresser drawer! I don't have the balls to throw it away! *dances to 'every little step', trips..watches wig fall to the floor*

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  6. I LOVE this post, Iz! I talk about this stuff ALL the time. In fact, one of my very first posts was on this subject of technological evolution. Look at the differences 10-20 years ago and imagine another 10-20. Almost unfathomable. Maybe the freakin' Jetsons were right.

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  7. It is amazing how fast things grow and change. When I was young my mom had records that played in 78, old heavy records that I loved to listen to.

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  8. Oh, the cassette! My childhood best companion when the radio wasn't playing what I wanted to hear. I remember going to a Camelot Music store and buying my first two cassettes: Madonna's "Like A Virgin" album and Egyptian Lover's "On The Nile" album. Two complete opposite genres, but then again, I'm a tad bit diverse. Those were the days. Rewinding was a pain though!

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  9. Oh man... I refuse to use Ipods. I still use CDs in my car and they get all scratched up and it's time to go back and burn some new ones.

    This brought me back in the day when I used to stay on the radio all day long during the summer and try to catch my favorite songs. Then, hit the hard, chunky REC button on my little cheap ass boom box (remember those?). Remember how annoying it was when you had to rewind it all the way back to the beginning?! lmao

    I LOVE this post!!!!

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  10. The world has change so fast! It's kind of comforting to see this cassette!

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  11. I was still proudly making mix tapes for myself until the mid 2000's! ha. My old stereo with the tape deck finally busted and my new one has an awesome iPod dock....but no room for tapes =/

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  12. Oh yeah... I remember those old things. Technology just seems to get faster and faster - who would've thought in 2000, that in 8 years or so, we'd be able to see our house - and everyone else's - on Google Maps???!

    And "remember Alf? He's back - in pog form."

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  13. I don't remember 8 tracks but I DO remember cassettes. I had so many books on tape and all these childish antics and this speaker/recorder and I loved it!

    Man I miss it haha.

    The Adorkable Ditz' Missteps

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  14. Remember when cassettes would get old and everything would sound all warped and weird and then your machine would chew the shit out of them? My childhood is littered with chewed tapes. Heh! I remember when I first got a CD player thinking it was space age after my old vinyl albums and cassettes. Now CDs are old hat. Holy shit I feel old. By the time I'm actually old we'll be downloading music into our heads and flying to work. Jesus.

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  15. Orale, Iz. Yes, i have boxfulls of cassettes I made from my old records, favorite cuts, genres etc. I even have some reel-to-reel stuff I recorded.

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