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Being born in smack bang in the middle of 90s, I’ve grown up around technology. I’ve seen some huge changes over my lifetime with technology, from having some next level brick phone that doesn’t even have a coloured screen to being around some truly amazing new and upcoming technology, including 3D printing and virtual reality. Some brands have just gotten bigger throughout the years and others have sadly pretty much disappeared. From toys to games consoles, we’ve seen some huge changes over the last 20 years. This post was inspired by ebuyer who are celebrating their 20th Birthday currently and it’s super exciting to see how tech has advanced over the last two decades.
Some things have done a full 360, from being popular to pretty much going out of fashion altogether, then them being replaced with more modern alternatives to eventually making a come back. With phones they started out huge, then everyone wanted them to be small, I remember those flip phones and ones that twisted into place to make a long phone, phones with keypads, full qwerty keyboards like on our Blackberry. Finally returning back to being a large phone which is 100% screen and no keypad and a variety of large sized phones. For phone brands, most people are either team Apple or team Samsung, it’s hard to get a look in for other phone manufacturers. Getting my first phone with the fully functioning internet on was in the last 6 years or so, before that, I did have phones which could go online but the apps were ridiculous, does anybody else remember Facebook on a Blackberry?
Photos are a weird one too, they go from being printed out, from being taken on a phone and uploading to the internet, to using a Polaroid camera for those internet snaps. Being able to upload photos online is a huge thing for a lot of people and most of us couldn’t imagine having to take a film to the store and wait for it to be developed and then going to collect it. As someone who was young around this time, it isn’t something I really remember other than using those disposable cameras when I visited London as a child. Then my parents getting them printed and the photos were a complete mess and half of them were in the dark or pointing at the floor. Weirdly, I still have a few of them, despite them being of someone’s shoes and the tube in the dark. I still love taking Polaroid photos as they’re great for scrapbooks and framing. I even used them to announce that I had gotten engaged. I think I will always have a soft spot in my heart for polaroids and photo booths.
The way in which we listen to music is something that I think is amazing, I remember growing up I had a portable CD player and I thought it was amazing. It was bulky, heavy and could only play the songs which were upon the disk inside (roughly 11 songs), swiftly moving on from that I had my first MP3 player, they were amazing for car journeys and being outside. I used to have a playlist compiled by my dad throughout my very early teens. It was mostly Avril Lavigne with a mix of Pink and Nickelback added in too. Next, I got an iPod shuffle, which although it was smaller than my MP3 player was kind of a step back as you weren’t able to control what songs were going to be next, they would in be random to the order they were on your iTunes account. I mostly filled mine with Escape The Fate and Papa Roach, I am pretty sure they only held like 40 songs or something too.
After this, the real fun started, with the iPod touch, my first experience of an Apple device with a screen which included using Facetime. It allowed you to pile up your Itunes with songs and even buy albums on the device and it was pretty cool. I’ve always seemed to have a phone you could listen to music on. I do remember at school using Bluetooth to send songs to your friends via phone and needing to stand close together to be able to send them (not even sure if this is even true?) and then you’d get a brand new song on your phone which you’ve wanted for ages and you felt like a boss. It does make me sad that the kids of today (oh my god, I am officially old) won’t get to experience such terrible technology like we did.
This post has been a huge wedge of nostalgia for me, and I hope you’ve enjoyed reading it too, despite it being super long. I’d love to know in the comments what your all-time favourite piece of technology is.
