I guess one of the signs you're starting to get older is when you can remember times before common everyday technology.  I've had that happen a few times already what with cell phones and the internet.  It's kind of weird because I remember when the internet itself was really different to the internet of today, like before Tiktok and Facebook and Youtube and Twitter and even Google.  And then I also remember when nobody used the internet at all.  

We did have T.V. when I was a kid and I even had a computer, although it was impossibly primitive by today's standards.  I remember having a computer called a PET that ran off of like cassette tapes and then I got an Apple IIC that had a monitor in which the only colors were black and green.  I'll be honest, I don't really miss that, but there are some things from the old days I kind of miss.

I remember when I was a kid there were older people who would tell me about how there were no televisions when they were kids and they would sit around and listen to programs on the radio.  A lot of them were nostalgic for those times and claimed that something got lost when the transition was made from radio to television.  Similarly I know there are people who felt like movies got worse when they introduced color and sound to them.

All of that sounded absolutely crazy to me when I was a kid.  I couldn't fathom how listening to a radio story could possibly be better than watching a show, but I actually kind of get it now.  Kind of like reading a book, you have to utilize your imagination more, and there really is something cool about that.  

I've seen the advent of technologies that are objectively better than what came before, but I can still feel like there's something valuable in some small way that gets lost in the process.  If you didn't experience browsing through a video rental store or a record store growing up there's no reason why you would miss it and you probably wouldn't particularly enjoy it.  It would feel kind of massively inconvenient.  There's no question that it's objectively better to be able to pick what you want to watch from the comfort of your home and watch it whenever you want than it was to have to go to another location and hope that they had a copy of what you wanted to watch in stock.  Oh yeah, and then you had to rewind the cassette when you were finished and also take the time to go back to video store to return it within a couple days or you got charged a late fee.  

I definitely don't miss that last part, but I do miss the feeling of walking down the aisles of a video rental store and just browsing the options on the shelves.  There was even a particular smell to video stores probably from the plastic in the cassettes or the videos themselves.  There was a similar thing with record stores.  It was fun as heck to search through the bins and make discoveries.  Also without the benefit of the internet there was always a possibility that you would discover a band you liked had an album out you didn't know existed.  Either an older one you hadn't found before or a new release you hadn't heard of.  There's no feeling in the world that can match the excitement of learning a band you loved had an album you didn't know about and you'd grab it and buy it immediately.

I mean, if you were a hardcore music fan there were resources you could use to get that information, it wasn't like there was a complete information blackout.  There were books and magazines and whatnot, but for a teenager who didn't necessarily have the time or money or even awareness to get those things, there was something indescribably fun about not knowing and just constantly searching.

The other thing I'll mention, and I referred to this the other day, is that they way overcharged for CDs back in the day.  I don't miss that part at all, but I will say there's oddly something to be said for a certain amount of scarcity or limitations in your music listening options.  Nowadays you can pretty much listen to anything that was ever recorded with the click of a few buttons, and that's objectively a good thing.  But when you had to decide what you were going to spend your money on and you only owned a certain amount of albums in the first place, it forced you to really cultivate your record collection and develop certain tastes and you became very attached to the bands you liked.  

I'm sure people still get attached to bands they like, but to me personally it's not the same.  I find music is a lot more disposable now.  I didn't invest as much into acquiring it, so I'm not willing to give it as much time to impress me.  I move on to something else quickly if I'm not liking something fairly quickly.  I'm absolutely positive I'm missing out on some good stuff that way because many of my favorite albums from back in the day were growers and took quite a few listens to appreciate.  The internet age and the everything being available on demand has definitely decreased my attention span.  They used to warn us that MTV was going to do that to us, but really it's the infinite availability of options at all times that has done that.  I still think it's a good thing and it would be really hard now to go back to the old ways, but I do feel like there's something ineffable that's gotten lost in the process of improving things along with some stuff like late fees that I'm really glad to be rid of.