Ask Lemmy

I guess, in a very liberal definition of the term, "cloud gaming". Specifically the old LodgeNet systems in hotels where you could rent Nintendo games by the hour to be streamed to your room from a physical console somewhere behind the front desk. Every room had a special controller with oodles of extra buttons on it hardwired to the television that also functioned as television remotes.

The service was objectively awful, of course, when factoring in how much the hotel charged compared to what little you got for it. But I've always found it fascinating.

Web browsers about 10 years ago

Video game consoles.

Toasters. Specifically the Sunbeam Radiant Control toaster, with the tag line "Automatic Beyond Belief!". There is a fan site (https://automaticbeyondbelief.org/, excellent url). Like, what other appliance line has a fan site? Surely no modern day toaster!

But of course I first heard about it from Technology Connections video.

The original tv remote didn't use batteries. It used sound. Giant clunky devices with large tactile buttons. Never runs out of batteries and still works if your kid tries to block the screen to keep you from turning it off

The phones with the internal hidden camera, I was sure it would be the future

https://www.91mobiles.com/list-of-phones/pop-up-camera-phones

Did someone say CRT??? https://lemmy.world/c/crtart

Before transistors there were vacuum tubes which did the same thing but using very different principles (and were also way bigger, even than traditional transistors and billions of times more than the transistors in the most modern ICs)

Before electric milling or even steam milling, flour used to be milled using watermills and windmills which, IMHO, are way cooler.

Cars used to be cool. Every car company had some kind of sporty car, a couple cheap cars, a big luxury sedan and, a while ago, a station wagon.

Now every car is an SUV or CUV. Sedans are getting phased out. Cool sports cars don't make money so they don't make them. People don't buy station wagons so they don't make them. And they're pushing big, angry trucks on everyone.

Ice. As time has gone by, it has become less cool.

Oh man...I have an entire ten page paper on the go about this topic and it just keeps growing. One day I'll publish it in a blog or something, but for now it's just me vomiting up my thoughts about mass market manufacturing and the loss of zeitgeist.

The examples that I always use are a) Camera Lenses, b) Typewriters, and c) watches.

Mechanical things age individually, developing a sort of Kami, or personality of their own. Camera lenses wear out differently, develop lens bokehs that are unique. Their apertures breath differently as they age No two old mechanical camera lenses are quite the same. Similarly to typewriters; usage creates individual characteristics, so much so that law enforcement can pinpoint a particular typewriter used in a ransom note.

It's something that we've lost in a mass produced world. And to me, that's a loss of unimaginable proportions.

Consider a pocket watch from the civil war, passed down from generation to generation because it was special both in craftsmanship and in connotation. Who the hell is passing their Apple Watch down from generation to generation? No one....because it's just plastic and metal junk in two years. Or buying a table from Ikea versus buying one made bespoke by your neighbour down the street who wood works in his garage. Which of those is worthy of being an heirloom?

If our things are in part what informs the future of our role in the zeitgeist, what do we have except for mounds of plastic scrap.

The internet