Our daily lives were reshaped in strange ways by technology not so long ago. Users tiptoed around limited hard drive space, dial-up modems, delicate machines, and expensive phone bills. However, consumer electronics have only gotten better equipped to handle our demands. Some of our early tech habits sound so absurd now.
Blowing into game cartridges
If your video game wouldn’t load, didn’t turn on, or came up with scrambled colors on the screen, there was only one thing to do: unplug the game cartridge and blow directly into the bottom of it.
Everyone swore that dust was bad and that our breath could solve any tech issue.
The truth was, we were likely conducting static onto the metal pins that plugged into the console, but who knows? All we know is that it worked well enough that an entire generation of children believed they had magic breath that could fix gaming problems.
Recording songs off the radio
Streaming didn’t exist, so if you wanted a certain song you liked, you had to find it on the radio.
You’d sit next to your stereo with headphones on and hold down “Record” and “Play” on your tape deck at exactly the same time the song started. And pray that the DJ wouldn’t talk over the beginning or end of the track.
Using T9 text messaging
Phones didn’t yet have full keyboards. We only had access to numbers 0-9. To spell the letter “C,” we had to press the number 2 three times. In order to text faster, we used something called T9 or “Text on 9 keys.”
It was a program that tried to guess the word you wanted to say based on single button presses. It would take forever and strain your thumbs something fierce. We mastered it so well that we could have full conversations under our desks in class without looking at the phone screen.
Rewinding VHS tapes
Videos didn’t just magically end. When you were done watching a movie on a VHS cassette, the tape itself was always on the “wrong” side. You had to hold down a button and wait while the machine loudly rewound the physical film back to the beginning.
It was so common, there was even a slogan for it at the video store: “Be Kind, Rewind.”
If you returned your movie without rewinding it, the employees at video stores would charge you a small fine because no one else could watch that movie until they rewinded it too.
Burning mix CDs
Wanting a custom playlist for your car used to mean opening your computer and “burning” a CD. You literally inserted a blank shiny CD into your computer and used its laser to etch the music onto its surface.
It was a sluggish process that usually didn’t work if you tried to use your computer for anything else while it burned. If you got a “buffer underrun,” you just wasted that CD, which became what we lovingly called a “coaster.”
Checking caller ID before answering
“Caller ID” used to often be its own box attached to the side of your landline phone. When someone called, you’d have the whole family crowd around the box to read who was mysteriously calling.
If it were someone you didn’t want talking to you, you’d silently watch the phone ring, hoping they’d leave a message. Caller ID was the first ever method of “ghosting” someone before smartphones.
Sharing music with USB cables
You couldn’t just upload a song to someone like you can with AirDrop or “The Cloud.” You literally had to connect your laptop to the computer with a USB cable.
“Syncing your devices” felt like smuggling luggage from one room to the next. If you were at a friend’s house, you might swap “thumb drives” (tiny sticks of plastic that only hold 3 albums each) just to listen to each other’s music.
Keeping spare AA batteries everywhere
Nobody’s electronics lasted long in the early 2000s because nothing had rechargeable batteries that you could plug into the wall.
Gameboys, digital cameras, and portable CD players all used disposable batteries called AA’s.
You literally had to walk around with a “backup” set in your backpack at all times in case your music died. There was no worse tragedy than finding out your music had died halfway through your bus ride home.
Watching photos load line by line
When you first saw photos on websites back in the day, they didn’t magically “pop” into view. Most of your images would load line by line horizontally.
You’d watch the person’s forehead load, then their eyes would appear, then their nose. You had to sit there and hope it was even the picture you wanted before the whole thing popped into view.
Dial-up internet screeching
Remember when the internet wasn’t always magically “ON?” Before you got online, you had to manually make your computer dial-up like an actual phone. Doing so would unleash a horrid cacophony of electronic screeches, dial-up modem static, and laser noises straight from hell.
You had to sit quietly for half a minute and listen to your computer try to connect to the internet. If someone else made a call at your house using the corded telephone, the “screeching” would stop and instantly break your internet connection.
Sources: Please see here for a complete listing of all sources that were consulted in the preparation of this article.
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