Maybe fully appreciate isn’t quite the right phrase but there is something to having been forced to do things a worse way that helps you remain constantly grateful for the improvement.
Eg…I went from walkmen to cds. Holy God that was so much better, even if the first few players were pretty bad. I still chuckle when I think about my effectively unlimited access to almost all the music I can imagine vs fast forwarding to get to the song I wanted, if I was lucky enough to have the right tape on hand.
Oddly, off the top of my head, I’m not sure the most recent generation of younger adults (say, 18-25ish, whatever the “basically grew up w smartphones” generation is) have had any similar groundbreaking changes beyond AI which uhhh, isn’t super popular here. Some stuff has improved (graphics etc) but off the top of my head I can’t think of something that’s really solved a constant annoyance. (I imagine fully autonomous vehicles would be another similar tech leap.
As I recall, portable CD players skipped a lot. Not sure if they ever fixed that, I went straight from cassette tapes to MP3 players. Now those were a real game changer.
Oh yeah the first ones were pretty bad for that. But once they figured “anti shock” iirc they were good enough to play from my jacket pocket while walking around.
Mp3s were absolutely a game changer. I bizzarely had a cd player that could handle regular cds and cds with MP3s and spent a couple days copying over a few cds worth of mp3s before I spent a year abroad.
And for all that, I bet you also appreciate the shit out of having all music all the time in all the places.
Maybe fully appreciate isn’t quite the right phrase but there is something to having been forced to do things a worse way that helps you remain constantly grateful for the improvement.
Eg…I went from walkmen to cds. Holy God that was so much better, even if the first few players were pretty bad. I still chuckle when I think about my effectively unlimited access to almost all the music I can imagine vs fast forwarding to get to the song I wanted, if I was lucky enough to have the right tape on hand.
Oddly, off the top of my head, I’m not sure the most recent generation of younger adults (say, 18-25ish, whatever the “basically grew up w smartphones” generation is) have had any similar groundbreaking changes beyond AI which uhhh, isn’t super popular here. Some stuff has improved (graphics etc) but off the top of my head I can’t think of something that’s really solved a constant annoyance. (I imagine fully autonomous vehicles would be another similar tech leap.
As I recall, portable CD players skipped a lot. Not sure if they ever fixed that, I went straight from cassette tapes to MP3 players. Now those were a real game changer.
Oh yeah the first ones were pretty bad for that. But once they figured “anti shock” iirc they were good enough to play from my jacket pocket while walking around.
Mp3s were absolutely a game changer. I bizzarely had a cd player that could handle regular cds and cds with MP3s and spent a couple days copying over a few cds worth of mp3s before I spent a year abroad.
And for all that, I bet you also appreciate the shit out of having all music all the time in all the places.
Wondering if before I die there will be holograms generated by smart phones for internet browsing, texts, face time phone calls