Technology then and now

Then: Landline
Now: Mobile
It's hard to imagine that only 10 years ago, majority of voice calls were made using home-based landlines and payphones. Fast-forward to today, and traditional phones have had their dominance usurped by mobile phones and apps, which allow free and unlimited voice and video calls to anyone, anywhere.

Then: Dial-up Internet access
Now: DSL broadband and 3G/4G
As much as we miss the screeching sound of a dial-up modem connecting to the Internet, we'd rather not relive the dark ages of early Internet adoption. Who would want to wait more than 10 minutes to download an average-sized photo? Or get disconnected from the Internet whenever someone uses the landline?

Then: Analog music player
Now: iPod, smartphone
The age of lugging around cassette tapes, audio CDs, and—gasp!—vinyl discs has long been over. Thanks to iPods and smartphones, your entire music library can easily fit into your jeans pocket. Listening to songs from your collection or streaming music via apps has never been easier.

Then: Film camera
Now: Smartphone
We get that a small patch of pro photographers and analog-photography enthusiasts would still rather carry a separate film camera. However, mobile-phone cameras have indeed come a long way from a decade ago, with many of today's models even besting the optics of point-and-shoots

Then: Optical disc
Now: USB flash drive, cloud storage
Back in the day, moving files on and off computers was usually done using optical discs. It was a slow and tedious process that was sometimes met with hardware-related problems; either the disc or the optical disc was the culprit. Flash memory—in the form of a USB flash drive—is a much smaller and faster data-storage solution.

Then: Fax machine
Now: Email
Remember the once-ubiquitous fax machine? That hulking, unintuitive piece of plastic and metal that made phone calls and sent and printed paper copies of text or images to and from another fax machine? Fortunately for us, Internet-based alternatives like email clients exist today.

Then: CRT TV
Now: LCD TV, smart TV
From fat to flat. TVs look far more appealing than they ever did during our parents' generation. Even better, they no longer rely on free-to-air and cable channels for programming, as we've seen from newer models that can stream content from online sources or play videos sans an auxiliary media player.

Then: Mail
Now: SMS, IM, social-media post/message
Postal-service mail, anyone? Not unless you purposely want to keep the receiving party waiting. Sending texts messages via SMS, instant-messaging software, or social media is the almost-instantaneous way to go. Sure, your penmanship may take a nose dive, from which it may never recover, but you can live with that, right?

 

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