Just because older technology isn’t advertised or marketed doesn’t mean it isn’t still valuable to us. We can’t forget about all the good uses and fun these once all-the-rage pieces of technology brought us.
Remember the good old days when you wanted to watch TV? No remote. No cable. Just your three favorite channels — CBS, NBC, ABC — and if you were lucky enough and had the rabbit ear antennas in just the right spot, FOX. Those were the days of analog television. Invented around 1940, over-the-air television has been a staple in the American household ever since. More than one million TV sets were in homes by the é0s. With the recent conversion to HDTV and the popularity of cable and satellite television, the FCC is scheduling the shutdown of broadcast TV in 2009. Best Buy has already stopped selling these types of TV sets in support of this. So all of you late adapters who are still enjoying your three channels, better start looking into a decent cable TV package.
Around the same time as I was enjoying my three channels, I was absolutely loving my Nintendo. Before 3-D games and realistic army shooting games, we had eight-bit, 16 color NES. Featuring classics like Super Mario Bros. and Zelda, the NES was the pioneer for video games today. Sadly, Nintendo officially announced it will no longer be servicing the NES, SNES or the original Gameboy for any reason. So what does that mean exactly? If your 25-year-old copy of Excitebike stops working, you’re pretty much out of luck. You have to give the guys at Nintendo kudos for holding out this long — I can barely get help with my Xbox360.
So lets take a moment of silence and remember a few classic pieces of technology before they are officially laid to rest. If it wasn’t for TV and video games, who knows what society would turn to for entertainment.
Books?
Jonathan Masker is a wireless solution expert and a self-proclaimed gadget guru. Reach him at jonathan.masker@gmail.com.