25 Things Your Future Colleagues Won’t Know About

As we approach the end of the year, I thought I’d make a post about the incredible technological progress we’ve made. Here’s my overview of things that will draw blank stares from your future colleagues.

Media:

1. Vinyl records / VHS tapes / Cassette tapes / CDs / LaserDisc / MiniDisc and their playback equipment
2. 3.5” and 5.25” Floppy disks
3. Film rolls
4. Standard definition
5. Encyclopedias and atlases
6. Phone books
7. Newspapers and magazines

Hardware:

1. CRT monitors
2. Dot-Matrix printers
3. Typewriters
4. Answering machines
5. Rotary-dial telephones

Software:

1. DOS
2. Command line interface
3. WordPerfect
4. Lotus

Connectivity:

1. Handwritten postal mail
2. Payphones
3. Fax machines
4. Modems
5. Pagers
6. Walkie Talkies

Web:

1. Portals / Search engines like Altavista and Lycos
2. Chat programs like IRC and ICQ

And the most frightening thing that will be forgotten is “privacy”.