What's the "tech" in the Past?

Paying at the local office of the power service company, I see from the bill for the past month (August) is Php 1,900. I remember the first time I was sent to pay the bills when I was 14 years old, it was still under a thousand pesos. Bane of technology, eh? But all we had back then was a Cathode ray TV (the one that takes up too much space), 2 phones, an iron, a fridge and some lights. Today is a different story. A phone or two for each of us (three of us own phones), a new fridge (taking a new one was expected to help lower power costs), an LTE modem, a laptop, a new, larger TV (because when people get older, they need to see things bigger), electric fans, and some basics we had before. I remember before when we started noticing the bills getting higher by the month, my mother would start a nostalgic sermon on how liitle electric bills would eat from her salary. She was talking about the 80’s. She says our gadgets are to blame for the eyebrow-raising bills. Maybe inflation got in the way in between thrity years ago when she first lined up for her payroll as a banker and now that she is a Municipal Assessor, we would say. But what really did they have before, we would ask? We already know about the larger camote cues they had, and all the healthier snacks they can buy with 25 centavos. What we were eager to ask was: What gadgets did they have in hand? Or, did they really have gadgets to begin with?

Smart gadgets today. Photo grabbed from www.cell2fix.com

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My mother grew up in the 70’s and 80’s. She said that the things we enjoy with our smartphones today (listening to music, playing games, communicating with others), they were also also able to do. Albeit, each action requires a separate gadget. Before mp3 players saw the light of day, walkmans (derived from the brand name Sony Walkman) were in and looked much like the junior version of car batteries in its advent.

Sony© Walkman. Photo grabbed from Pinterest

Ever accompanied by large headphones, the walkman eventually became smaller so as to be handy. A close competitor was the Video Casette Recorder (VCR). Bigger than the Walkman, a user usually brings with him/her apencil to rollback the tape after playing. This way, one wouldn’t have to play a casette’s side B in order to play side A.Some casette players were also tailored to be recorders. Phones came in, with all the entertainment and practical functions packed in, and made many other gadgets obsolete.

1980 Magnavox VCR. Screencap from a Youtube video

Nintendo and Atari consoles were popular then as they are now, although they didn’t have Sony PSP, DOTA, and Android games for competition. Personal computers (PCs) were very expensive. And all they had for portable storage were floppy disks capable of storing only 1.44 megabytes (MB) of data, a far cry from this generation’s 1- or 2-Terabyte External Drives.

Part of an ad poster for Nintendo. Shown are some of the games in their game console. Photo from gamasutra.com

Atari Game Console. Photo from KpopStarz

Nowadays, news, information, and even the immortal tsismis genre have taken electronic forms. Daily newspapers, such as Manila Bulletin, Philippine Star, and Philippine Daily Inquirer, can be accessed through the internet, and events deemed newsworthy can be made known to the public in mercurian pace, as it happens, in the screens of smartphones. But before this, they were confined to the offices and printing presses, where news gathered in the day would be quickly written and finished by noon or twilight, printed in the evening, and leave the presses for the ports by midnight to be distributed to stalls by dawn. Also occupying the same stalls were periodicals i.e. magazines, comics. These, particularly comics (or komiks)were so popular that, as mother would tell us, people would wait for hours like adults waiting for their turn to pay their taxes in town halls.

February 26, 1986 spread of Philippine Daily Inquirer. From inquirer.net

A way to connect with people – aside from parties or tipar - was through telephone calls; telebabad if it took a lot of time. It washard to get a telephone and a number at the time because they only had four-digit numbers, meaning only 9999 numbers could be used at a time. More kids played in the street then than now, although today is a better scene as far as safety is concerned. Games are now played in samrtphones and tablets. And these games often simulate reality, and in other times distort it. This has “developed” – and we use the term loosely – children with considerable lack of the abilty to socialize. But, hey? Doesn’t every generation of kids have a problem with socializing? Wasn’t plastikan among kids a thing before?

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Do you stories from your mother's sermons? Particularly about "technology" they had in their time? Feel free to comment below to share your stories. Till next time!