This link is to the end of the polaroid camera. Also, this is the last year any company will send out new VHS movies. I am not yet 45 but can remember when the polaroid camera was magic and the VHS was an unbelievable invention.
Richard Brookhiser wrote in National Review recently that in New York by simply staying in the same place you have visited places where people can never go again and met people who no one can anymore. I don't think he means just people who died but certain employments, ways of living and of being dissapear.
As we enter the New Year it is striking that we are entering the last year of he "aughts." As a kid I met Isaac Assimov and many of the things in his sciencefiction are old hat now, and watched Space 1999 and figured nothing could be as futuristic as the 21st century.
Each small thing that dissapears is bearable but as the years pass trying to explain some things to people much younger becomes more difficult, faster than it used to.
I have been to the last vestiges of the Portuguese Empire (Macao). The British Empire (Hong Kong) (cf. Bermuda). The Soviet Empire, and was in a country called West Germany. None of these places except Macao and Hong Kong had cell phones. Personal computers were rare or unheard of. You took travelers checks because you could not use ATMS anywhere abroad. None of those entitities exist anymore.
I feel like Phineas Fog.
1 comment:
We can be thankful for the freedom we had in the "dark ages" of rotary phones, casette tapes and no microwaves. We travelled unrestrained in the back of the station wagon, rode our bikes w/out helmets and stayed out until dark w/out worry.
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