I don’t know when it happened. One minute I am the only person I know with a Beta machine, watching five dollar movie rentals of movies that weren’t that expensive when they were in the theaters, and the next minute I became my dad, who hates the same technology he eagerly uses. Times were so much simpler when we had AM radio and typewriters. FM radio took away our static and if you remember like I do, not all that many commercials. I remember one station that I listened to would play entire albums, uninterrupted. Those were good days.

Albums are those twelve inch round things that you put on a turntable and played with a needle. If you have no idea what a turntable is, it’s not a big deal anymore.

Those days didn’t last nearly long enough and now the only thing I use the radio for is talk radio. Same with recordings. We went from vinyl (albums), to eight track tapes and that was so awesome because listening to an album in the car sucked. Sooner or later you would have to leave your driveway and that meant you were going to have to unplug the power cord. These awesome eight track players were mounted right under your dash and sometime you could hear two songs at the same time. Solution…. a book of matches. That was back when Americans were great. Today most likely there would be a lawsuit and our government would force a recall and bankrupt the industry and then bail them out. Back then, we just said,” I wonder what would happen if we wiggle that thing around and stick something in it?”

Cassette tapes killed eight tracks dead, and for the first time, you could make your own play list…. if the DJ gave you plenty of warning, you would get the entire song. I hated those AM holdover guys that loved to talk all over my favorite song that I had been waiting for two hours to put on my cassette. I know we had tape machines but nobody drove around with a tape machine in their car, so I got rid of my eight tracks and was ready to live in cassette land forever.

CDs killed cassettes dead. If you are not at least my age, you have no idea how awesome this little shiny thing was. If FM took away our static. CDs took away all noise and left you with only beautiful music.

Then came personal computers and something called the world wide web. I remember that there were so many boxes and parts that if we didn’t have a huge full size van, we would have had to make two trips to get it home. The monitor looked like a monster, but the screen was tiny. We had to load everything on it, and all the discs involved, and the dial up speeds, and the time spent waiting for downloads. And it was amazing. I compare it to the original TV families that sat in front of a tiny, snowy, black and white screen and could not be happier.

All the while I adapted and embraced the new technology, and eagerly awaited the next advancement. The changes in video gaming were just as incredible, but that will be for another time. It wasn’t long until I used that computer to make my own play list, and burn my own CDs, and life was beautiful and I was ready to live my life out in CD land forever.

Digital music and satellite radio killed just about everything in it’s path. The original Napster was everything for everybody and I still use it today. I boarded the XM Radio train very early and I still love the all music and no talking as much today as I did when I received my first XM radio for Christmas all those years ago.

I guess nobody wants to give all this new technology up, but sometimes, between all the updates that’s required which forces me to turn things on regularly or be faced with an avalanche of programs and apps screaming for updates, I long for a little static. Just a little though!

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