Was thinking about Internet cafes. And the associated culture. Briefly pervasive and futuristic and now ancient, obsolete. Is there anything else that followed the same blazing trajectory?
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Hifi separates are still popular though, alongside the vinyl revival
Doubt the one I had with a double tape deck would be much in demand these days though. Used to enjoy recording songs while listening to the top 40, trying to time it just right!
True, I was sort of originally thinking of all the cables, and speakers were like 75% of all electronics shops, which were also much more prevelant. I'll never forget grand designs having these houses with like 9 miles of cables so they could have music in two rooms, like a year before Bluetooth.
1995, Concorde was still flying, Eurostar had started operating. Walking down Brixton High Street, looked up to see Eurostar coming in to Waterloo over the bridge as Concorde lifted up from Heathrow, and I was thrilled by the spectacle, I thought the future is now. And now, the future has passed.
I also recall, as a kid in Essex, playing football, we all stopped suddenly as we vibrated with an unknown roar. Concorde was flying low on a test flight. We stared in awe. Ever seen Pather Panchali? When the kids hear the steam train and run towards it from the rice fields? That was us.
I'd add to this that the whole aspirational perception that Concorde carried with it was just as much of a lasting legacy as the engineering achievement it was.
On Blackberry, the film is so much better than it has any right to be and really shows how they managed to break into the market in the first place and how they failed to really understand why the iPhone was going to kill their product
I would say malls. I’ve seen a lot of dilapidated ones that are just a big empty parking lot. By the time I was 16, I was seeing news about more & more dying malls, with that # only growing. There are a couple that I know that seem to be doing well all things considering, but I wonder for how long?
I saw a terminal once, travelling to Brittany with my ex, flat of French gf of her sister. Maybe 1997. I really wanted to try it but for some reason I couldn't. Maybe they were trying to explain to me that it didn't work. My French is a bit primitive.
Letters still work. Without unnecessary detail have had recent issues with both HMRC and NHS which were sorted very quickly after sending a snail mail letter.
True, maybe I should have been more specific to handwritten letters between friends. I worked as a postie for a few years (2010's) and seeing those small envelopes was a bit of a novelty.
fuck it we should bring back internet cafés. basically every café has wireless internet at this point but why not bring back the desktop computer into the café environ? i think it could do a lot of good
Spooks would have struggled without internet cafes. What’s that son? Spooks? It was a 00’s MI5 series, it’s on the DVD’s on that shelf over there. DVD’s? They were like Netflix but actually contained stuff you wanted to watch.
My grandmother had one and did use it. She also had an electric blanket, another thing that’s gone out of fashion. I remember all the earnest consumer-safety warnings about switching said blankets off before getting into bed.
I think electric blankets are back, at least for impoverished students in Glasgow. My daughter wants one for Christmas mainly because 'everyone else already has one'
Electric Blankets were still very much a thing when I lived in New Zealand in the early 2000s.
On brand for the “turn your clocks back to 1950” joke but also very practical for the 6 weeks a year that you needed the indoor heating you didn’t have.
The only time you see an internet cafe now is in a drama where someone wants to communicate with baddies using a primitive form of MSN Messenger, most recently in Day Of The Jackal
I worked in an internet cafe in Melbourne. And we had to try and upsell phone cards and had booths for people to call home. I worked Christmas Day. Had drunken backpackers staggering in to call their mammy on what was still Christmas morning back home.
I saw a demo of the Sony Elcaset at a Hi-Fi show in mid 70’s. Doesn’t qualify as although futuristic it was never pervasive. Hi-Fi shows on the other hand…. 🤔
You’ve probably done Betamax and Minidiscs. Also love this which may? be the one remaining example of a working clock from before it had been decided which direction constitutes “clockwise”… https://www.theflorentine.net/2016/03/03/the-duomo-clock/
Very important for spy dramas still. As in the new Day of the Jackal series where he uses one at a Paris train station. Not sure there really are any there now…
Associated culture ticks the box for launderettes.
Maybe they are not so uncommon in city centres these days, and it's a utility which maybe has a future. Even the Pope has opened a few of them to serve the homeless.
There is a new one in a shopping centre close to me, where you can put your stuff in one of their special bags, put that in a hopper, and get an alert on your phone when it's all washed and dried for you.
If only they'd do the ironing, too!
Those phonecards where you dialled a number, scratched off a PIN, put that number in, then dialled the international number you wanted to dial for a cheaper rate than you would get by using IDD.
They were about around the same time as internet cafes.
Interesting, because when you think about it Internet Cafes were always going to be on a limited time-span because it was almost inevitable that the tech would become more widespread and in more peoples homes at some point. The question was quite how narrow that window would be.
Video stores completely transformed the way we watched movies. There was a Blockbuster in every town & suburb, and getting a rental card was the first thing to do when moving house. And then, within a couple of years they went from ubiquitous to extinct.
But they had a long after-life. It was only the freeze of winter 1963 that finally killed use of the canals for moving cargoes such as coal in a few niche locations.
When the infrastructure exists, then inertia will keep it used. But you only have to look at the huge no of competition rail lines through Nottingham to see that, almost all coal was moved by rail by 1900.
I'm hoping vape shops are going to go the same way? (though our local high street is full of them so god knows what will take the space - another barbers no doubt - we only have ~20 of them in the street),
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We all hate Leeds scum! We all hate Leeds scum!
Doubt the one I had with a double tape deck would be much in demand these days though. Used to enjoy recording songs while listening to the top 40, trying to time it just right!
Slide rules and mechanical calculators. Super space age.
Individual transistors for anything but amplification.
Dri-nylon shirts
Once ubiquitous in every newsroom, magazine and design studio, now nowhere to be seen
https://retrogames.biz/products/thespectrum/
Which leaves me with a hifi thing in the kitchen with a port that the kids will wonder about its purpose.
Plus, ffs, hifis
Glorious way of taking the chill off a bed.
They are now mostly on timers and auto switch off. Totally safe. And so warm and cozy.
On brand for the “turn your clocks back to 1950” joke but also very practical for the 6 weeks a year that you needed the indoor heating you didn’t have.
Clubhouse (though it evolved to Twitter spaces)
George Foreman grills
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elcaset
Laserdiscs and Minidiscs were both superior products that rapidly died
Magic the Gathering
Ham radio
The Charleston
Christianity
Maybe they are not so uncommon in city centres these days, and it's a utility which maybe has a future. Even the Pope has opened a few of them to serve the homeless.
Oddly though, the local Texaco and Esso petrol station both have futuristic washing and drying facilities attached to them.
If only they'd do the ironing, too!
They were about around the same time as internet cafes.
Their time will come..
Mini disc has the same musicial fidelity as Spotify.
Blockbuster movie rental outlets.
Forgot that period between the yellow pages and internet existed.
I can't think of another business but there are a ton of similar products. Cds. Blu rays. Just to name a couple.