Category: Early Tech

As the holidays approach, we find ourselves taking the proverbial step back in time. To a simpler era, full of childhood memories.  Of warm family and friends. And of equally emotive early technologies.

Picture this:  It’s your first holiday away at college. The typical traditions are gone, and as a first step toward life on your own, it’s up to you to “invent” new traditions.

How did you solve for this gap, back in the day? To evoke a sense of home and normalcy?

Mix tapes, of course.

Technology sometimes holds all the emotion and creativity of humanity, and the nimble cassette tape was no exception.  These little nuggets could be shipped in $2 “Media Mailer” envelopes, bringing joy to others across the country.

The cassette trade at that time was mostly comprised of rare concert bootlegs by your favorite band. Or, hand-crafted musical messages of shared friendship, or burgeoning love. But in this story, the tape creation and delivery held a whole other deeper meaning.

On this day, before going home for the holidays, I busied myself schlepping my laundry basket across campus.  On top of my fresh, folded sheets and towels sat my old yellow Walkman.  With ears on, I crossed the cobblestone sidewalks with springy steps.

My favorite just came on – “Calypso Noel” by Johnny Mathis.  I thought back to the desperate request to my parental unit: “Please make me a Christmas tape, to help me get in the holiday spirit!”  And so the tape arrived, full of my favorites, taking me right back home.

These were younger and more blissful moments… the days when loved ones were healthy and vibrant… before our cheeks dampened not from melting snowflakes, but from holiday tears for family no longer among us.

With a skip and a jig, holding the basket on my hip, I was stronger then: ready to dance down the street to my cheesy old song.

Listening to the fade, a smile crossed my face, wondering what the next song might be.

Then…

A guttural grunt!

Thud!!

A creaky door opening!!!

And, the voice of Count Dracula announcing himself.  And thus began a Halloweeny tale.

What??

Well, back then you couldn’t always afford a new tape every time you took on a new “mix tape project”. You could just re-use an old one: that was the beauty of cassettes!  But, if you didn’t record “blank” at the end of the tape, there remained a glimpse of the now irrelevant and undesirable.

It always felt like a stunning discovery: a peek back in time to shunned remnants, intended to be discarded. In this case, the dub of an old, spoken-word Halloween record sat loud and proud at the end of “Side A”.

From there forward, the tape lovingly became known as the “Christmas Tape with Halloween Interlude”.  For when you flipped to Side B, Christmas continued in all its glory.

It was more than a hasty oversight to get a holiday music tape to a lonely college student, pining for home and warm Christmas memories.

It was the melding of two very different holidays, side by side, into one audio experience. One holy, warm and uplifting. One dark, frightful and cheeky.

The juxtaposition was just… perfect.

The tape could not have achieved a loftier goal: bringing a smile to the face.

Sometimes the sweetest and most memorable things in life come in the smallest of early technology packages.

As always, I hope this brought a smile to your face too!  Here’s a little something more to keep you dancing this holiday season.

Please “like” if you did on social media (@DigitalDeliria), share, and post your comments.

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We could bloviate here about the impact of Windows on the world.  How it brought computing to the masses.  And how its friendly user interface changed society forever. 

But no.  This tale is decidedly less lofty.

Let’s talk about when Windows was FUN. 

Wait, really?… was there a time when Windows was not considered a crusty old stalwart of the corporate world?   When it was not an OS simply trying to keep up with the Apple “cool factor”?

Yes, there was a time…  Let’s dig deep… to the little remembered but most hilariously fun thing about Windows 98.  I’m going out on a limb here… could it have been the most significant thing about it?…

Think back to your late 90’s office space.  What did you hear?  The sound of a fax machine.  A coffee maker perking.  Phones ringing.  Folks chatting.

What else?  Suddenly, piercing through the white noise and seizing your consciousness:

“Uh oh!”

“Bean.”

“Your mother was a hamster and your father smelled of elderberries!”

“Get away from her, you bitch!”

“I’m sorry Dave, I’m afraid I can’t do that.”

Why yes… our computers were talking to us, in the language and words that we picked for them.

Then, the laughs and conversation ensued among colleagues.  “Oh, you liked that movie too!”, followed by endless more Monty Python citations as the web coding and designing continued.

The Language We Wanted to Hear

We, the early Windows punks, figured out how to change the system and event sounds in the computer to whatever we wanted.

An endless array of short .wav files awaited us on the internet: tiny clips that were quick to download as internet speeds improved.  TV shows, sound effects, lines from movies, sitcoms, songs, heck: even R2-D2’s beeps – these were all fair game to customize our system sounds.

With a few clicks, you could turn an ordinary “crash” into the sound of HAL rebuking Dave from the movie 2001.  Frustrated when you lost all your work? – Never, with your entertaining sounds. 

And we crashed A LOT.  So why not make it a joy? 

Humanizing the Machine

All of these custom sounds humanized the machine, and transformed it into a whole new interactive entertainment vehicle.  One that fostered camaraderie and demanded attention from whomever was close enough to hear it.  It wasn’t hard: with our chunky attached speakers, we could make those computers spew lines all day long like a loud, Hollywood mogul.

If you had a favorite movie, you could even customize your entire system to focus on the sounds and sights of that film.  Theme packs of downloadable custom wallpapers and sounds turned your machine into a fun extension of the movie experience.  One day, you might feature one movie.  And the next day, another.  This material was pervasive — part of any major film promotion at the time! 

It was just one of many ways to personalize your workspace, much like a framed photo on your desk. (But how in the heck did we have the time to fiddle with this stuff back then??  That leads us to…)

Why Did This Trend Die?

On one hand, the soundscape created an often-hilarious work environment.  On the other, the distraction was absurd.  Especially as your coworkers installed longer and longer clips to play when the system reminded them to “save” their file before closing.  No, I don’t want to hear that five-minute long scene from Star Trek while I’m trying to work, ok??  Enough already!!

So at some point, system sounds just lost their luster, got annoying, and went away.  Such that there are almost no system sounds at all on our devices today.

Oh, but what a fun treat while it lasted! 🙂

As always, I hope you enjoyed this and it brightened your day.

Please “like” if you did, share, and post your comments.

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Growing up, I often immersed myself in nature and human/social experiences.  But my technology of choice — and distraction — was the Walkman. 

Often nature coincided with the technology, on long summer vacation road trips.  What music would you consume while gazing at big sky country in Montana?  For me, it was something as vast musically as that sky.

However in terms of human/social experiences, the Walkman stood as a welcome, isolating barrier.  A place where my Grandmother’s Tennessean drawl of local deaths from DuPont Chemical Cancers was substituted with the sweet, sweet thunder of “In the Air Tonight” drums.

Understandable then, that the yellow lump stayed hitched to my side.  And the yellow ears, a fixture on my head.  It’s apt to describe using a lyric from one oft-listened song at that time:  Walkman was an “aural contraceptive aborting pregnant conversation”. 

So, How Did This Walkman Thing Work?

Today, your entire music catalogue is available on one power-gobbling device.  The Walkman had only one thing in common with today’s technology: an insatiable power hunger. 

Step 1 was preparing a small, plastic tote bag that held all the gear.  A bag emblazoned with lively 80’s-style rainbows and music notes.

Most notably, extra batteries filled the bag.  Vacations took about 10 AA’s.  Rechargeable batteries never worked as well – quickly jettisoned in favor of fresh Eveready’s. 

The tapes, and music, would slow down to bizarre levels as batteries wore out.  The hairs would start standing up on your neck, as if you were listening to Ozzy backwards, expecting to hear “666” somewhere. 

But when it got unbearably slow, the fix was easy: just pop in new batteries and you’re back in business. (That’s one advantage over today’s technology, where anxiety takes over when you’re down to 10% with no plug-in in sight.)

Step 2 was dealing with the amazing portable multitude of cassette tapes.  On long road trips, 2 full padded carrying cases accompanied me.  Prior to music, I brought 5-7 paperbacks to pass the time.  However the Walkman offered a mercy of poetic entertainment, replacing carsick reading as endless cornfields zipped past my window.

Walkman’s Significance

Walkman was the start of what would forever remain an intensely personal and private experience for me:  the consumption of music.

I listened to things most “normal” people would not.  (Consider the challenging and evocative Kate Bush album “The Dreaming”.)

Things that in public settings, friends would “turn off” and replace with Paula Abdul or the like.  (I kid you not – this did happen when I played a prog rock deep cut at a gathering with my 7^th grade friends.  Clearly, Paula was much more suitable to pre-teen girl tastes. Bad on me: I was just too oblivious to really understand and serve the musical needs of others back then!)

So I learned to close down, keeping my Private Walkman Secret World to myself.  Allowing it to speak to me directly… a profound conversation between artist and interpreter.

Not to say that I don’t enjoy “normal” music.  It’s wonderful fun now to create a party playlist that lifts and elevates a crowd. 

But the transcendental still lurks and inspires on my periphery.

The early technology of Walkman translated to musical solitude and reverie.  I only see now that text, social media and endless other tech distractions just continued the trend of communication and relationship dilution (and sometimes destruction).

Destroy for some, but for me — blocking out the world with Walkman ends happily.  I was not to know or even imagine this as a youngster, but if not for music, I would never have met my husband.  Arguably the greatest relationship of my life.  

So maybe my Walkman journey “was meant to be”. Or perhaps I just took my yellow ears off long enough to find him!

As always, I hope you enjoyed this and it brightened your day.

Please share if it did!  And post your comments: did you have a similar musical experience, as fostered by early technology?  And was Walkman just one more step toward the forthcoming Digital Deliria?

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Getting out of our normal classroom and into the hallway normally meant “tornado drill”. Heads crouched to the dust-bunnied wall, hands clasped overhead.

But this was no such day in the Midwest. Today, we were buzzing, anticipating our first day in the coveted computer lab.  Access would be limited to once a week, given the entire elementary school shared this one room of computers. So we were eager for our chance!

Soon we filed from the hall into the cold room, to behold rows and rows of Apple 2e’s: black screens, green type, encased in greyish-tan bodies. In bins near the door, I saw soft-covered orange workbooks with big words: “Computer Literacy”.  

First reaction?… looks oddly sterile and boring to me. Yet inexplicably, many of my fellow classmates were very intrigued by this public-school system’s offering. Well, it beat the hollering of our normal teacher in her classroom, anyway.

We sat 2 kids to a terminal, and got our first lesson about floppy disks. (These sacred things that were kept on high shelves out of the reach of grubby hands.)

Right away, I was anxious.  Perhaps it was the sheer number of times we were warned not to touch that part of the 8-inch floppy that was the dark black disk. It stared at us with an inky eye, as if willing us to poke it. This eye was the maker or beaker of computing success. Children: Don’t ruin the disks, for the love of God! Over and over.

Soon we got our first project: write a program to tell the computer to print a picture.

The first step was to design a picture, using graph paper to map out the position of dots. With this, we could program the positions so that the computer would know what to print where.

With my paper in hand, I began to see what others were designing. Many, many smiley faces. A cloud here and there, perhaps. But what was I going to create?

I WAS GOING TO CREATE THE UNIVERSE!

So off I went, dotting-in stars and nebula and a central galaxy that was sure to impress. I loved astronomy, after all. So this would go up on my cork board next to my “earthrise” poster, for sure.

All these dots took a lot of time. Other kids had started to type their programs into the computer already.

By the time I started typing my program, their first pictures were rolling off the printer.

Sure enough, there was the smiley face… but with an oblong head and lopsided grin like your drunk Uncle who just came home from the local tavern. Clearly you could see what was wrong.

Assured that I would do better, I started typing. At this point the printer was rolling off picture after picture. Seeing this, I started to sweat and my typing became feverish to catch up. Type, type, save to the floppy… now most of the class is finished… I’m still typing and typing… Line – Print – Coordinates, Line – Print – Coordinates… endlessly. Nervously. Kids start leaving the room, their projects all done. Black screen now full of glowing green lines. Anxiety fully taking over. It was like writing lines on the chalkboard with acute embarrassment. And soon I was left alone, with the teacher… waiting on me.

To be sure, this was an advanced project for this second grader who had no desire or aptitude for computers at all.

325 lines of code later…  I was ready to print my universe.

I hovered over the printer with the teacher, in eager anticipation of the output.  Finally, the paper spat out, we turned it over, and …

Well… I had stars, but none were in the right places. 

What was to be a glowing galaxy with impressive arms spiraling outward and a concentration of stars at its center, looked like a simple smattering of dots across the white page.

After a semi-baffled moment, the teacher asked: “Is that what you meant it to look like?”

I paused. Hmmm.  Well, it did have stars. It did still look like a universe. So I said, “Uh… yeah?”

“Good!,” the teacher said with relief, finally free to release me from her classroom and get on with her lunch, for goodness sake.

In smarty-pants hindsight today, maybe I could say only God could put the stars in their rightful places on that horrible Apple 2e, and in the sky itself!

But my clear lesson learned was: I could design things, but I just could not make technology execute it for me.

So how on God’s green earth (erm… universe) did I get to where I am today, working in technology and living the digital life after a first tech experience like that? It was a highly unlikely start. 

Sheer determination, it seems. The moral of the story?: Don’t be afraid to take on the BHAG (Big Hairy Audacious Goal). And even when you get into a project without knowing in advance that you actually picked a BHAG, and it turns out to be way over your head — don’t give up! Keep going at it, even though you’re stressed to the hilt and on the razor’s edge of failure. Keep working. You might end up with something totally unique… never done before or since! And others will be hard pressed to find fault in that. 

Or at least, they’ll think the result was what you intended!

We want to hear from you — what were your first experiences with technology? Please post your comments below.

As always, I hope you enjoyed this and it brightened your day.

Please share if it did, to help brighten someone else’s!

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