Advances in technology happen so fast these days that we barely notice them. But there was a time when technology wowed us. When some new product caught our imagination and had us totally gripped.
Looking back on the objects today, we are flooded with the same rose tinted feelings of nostalgia as memories of first loves or distant hazy summers.
Time will tell if today’s kids will be waxing so lyrically about the Apple iPhone 14. In the meantime, here are our long lost technological crushes and the products that inspired them.
Andy
We all hate ad breaks, don’t we? We’ll pay a premium to avoid being distracted and annoyed by them. And we believe we’re too savvy to be much swayed. But we’re not. Not to the kind that manifests a wish, for us. One buried so deep, that we’d never easily find it for ourselves. Which is the real genius of original advertising.
Back in the early 1970s, I saw an ad for a Polaroid camera. A group posed at a poolside and a smiling Dad (always… this was the 70s) pointed a comically bulky camera at them. And then (…wonder!) as he holds a squarish piece of glossy white card in the palm of his hand, an image appears. An instant photograph.
I guess that my wish was to be able to create. To express myself. I couldn’t draw or paint, which really frustrated me in those years. This was going to be my outlet. I saved my pocket money for more than a year, and then bought the camera you see below for – I think – for about fifteen pounds.
Even though digital cameras and smartphones have made ‘instant’ the norm most, including me, rarely make the time to print an image. To create a tangible, material artefact. That was the magic of Polaroid. A real and persevering magic, as the Instagram generation is discovering all over again.
Hector
One piece of technology I am nostalgic for is a Sony video camera I bought over twenty years ago. I had saved up for ages and bought it at a duty-free so I could afford the best compact digicam available. I have no idea how much that was back then but I definitely got my money’s worth out of it. I shot tons of holiday videos and I even did about five or six friends’ wedding videos. I loved editing them on my old tulip iMac and could lose myself for hours. It’s funny to think how few people had video cameras back then and even fewer knew how to edit. Now everyone with a phone can shoot, edit and broadcast their own material.
My old Sony has now become a family heirloom and sits proudly alongside a Kodak Brownie my Grandfather bought in the 1930’s, and Keystone Cine Camera my mum bought in the 1950’s. All the old black and white photos and cine film show how much joy they also brought in their time.
Liz
In the mid 90s my dear nanna decided it was time to get with the times and treated my brother and myself to the talk of the town at the time – a Sega Mega Drive (or Genesis depending on where you live!). I was finally introduced to lifelong friends, Sonic the Hedgehog, Phantasy Star IV and Mortal Kombat became staples in my world, and thus my love for video gaming and the likes was born.
There was also something so simple, and special about the time we spent together, fighting over the controller and screaming when the other beat your high score. It was a bonding experience like no other, and there are memories there that I will never forget.
Whilst I haven’t used or owned a Sega Mega Drive in years, I am grateful that I found a passion young that still stands to this day. Sometimes you do miss the old favourites, and maybe it’s about time I find a way to invest in a new one? BRB going to a car booty…
Eszter
I’m nine and going on a class trip, sitting on a bus next to my friends, listening to tracks from our favourite Disney Channel shows. Yes, that sounds bad now, but it was extremely entertaining. That’s the first memory that comes to my mind whenever I see my old MP3 player. Recently I went back home and was looking through a box full of little treasures from when I was a kid when I found this tiny device.
MP3 players and iPods were – at least I used to believe so – the coolest piece of tech one could own. The best thing about them? You could get them in all sorts of colours. Back then all the tech I had access to was considerably ugly – imagine small black and grey Nokia phones. So this MP3 player was special. I took it with me whenever I travelled somewhere so it’s been through a lot. That being said, it (somehow) still works!
These days I resort to Spotify like many others, though personally, I find listening to music on phones pretty distracting – there’s just so much going on! So MP3 players were nice. But would I use them again? Not really. Considering how small they were, and how I manage to misplace my current much larger phone daily, it’s a wonder I still found this MP3 player in that box.
Sharon
It started when Sunday nights were the time for recording the charts. Trying to capture the week’s music without any of the DJ chatter was a serious matter. Sitting cross legged on the bedroom carpet, fingers poised and ready to hit ‘stop’ at precisely the right time. After that absorbing but futile pastime faded away – the DJs always talked over the end of the track- that was literally their job – recording on C90 cassette tapes moved to recording albums in their entirety. My own, or ones borrowed from friends, for one night only, for the purposes of recording them. Home recorded tapes were given as gifts, with the track lists carefully written out in teeny tiny writing on the cassette sleeve. Or recorded to listen to in the car. Relishing the ultimate freedom of your own music played loud and on the move. But my recording skills were never that great, so there are still songs I hear today, subconsciously waiting for the ‘clunk’ for when the tape ran out of space.
Matthew
I had this nifty little tape recorder as a kid, with two microphones so I could even interview people like on Wogan. I used to have terrific fun recording my own radio programmes and asking our neighbours fascinating questions about where cheese comes from and what noise a giraffe makes and so on. It was all fun and games until I decided to try my hand at field reporting and capture the special moment my dad removed a wasp nest from our garden. The cassette tape captured lots of angry buzzing and some four letter words. I never saw my tape recorder again, and that was the end of my short lived career in radio journalism.
Sharon’s tech crush takes me back to doing the identical thing in my teens – I absolutely loved listening to the chart countdown & recording it.