Tape recorder – going the way of the dinosaurs?
Kate’s post on Is Dating Dead really inspired me. I’ve been bothered by other things seemingly going the way of the dinosaurs. I really never thought of myself as a ‘fuddy duddy’ type person when it comes to hanging onto the past but what are we, and more importantly our kids, losing as we adopt new technologies?
In a magazine our tots get each month, there is always a story about Tex and Indi – twins in elementary school. This month Indi’s dad helps her pick out a picture of herself when she was a baby for a school project. The illustration of them picking out a baby picture is her sitting on her dad’s lap looking at a laptop computer.
Not a baby book. Not a photo album. A computer, presumably looking through their digital photos or Facebook.
I also recently learned that some schools aren’t teaching cursive any more. Many states have phased out teaching cursive because they don’t think it is relative in today’s society and apparently it’s not part of teaching standards in 41 states!!?? At this rate, kids growing up today may not have a cursive signature or be able to read their parents’ love letters when they’re grown.
My last trek into the past happened when I was interested in buying my daughter a tape recorder for her 5th birthday. I remember fondly afternoons with my friends doing ‘radio shows’ and ‘plays’ on my tape recorder and laughing as we played them back to hear ourselves. Here is the result I got in my online search:
Sorry, we couldn’t find a match for “tape recorder.”
Sorry, we couldn’t find a match for “cassette recorder.”
(Seriously, that’s a fun game. Go to a big store’s website and type in your favorite childhood toys. You may want to have wine handy. Prepare yourself to feel old wise and outdated experienced. To be fair, my extensive 5-minute research concluded that you can still buy tape recorders and cassette tapes, though only online. Sigh.)
Whatever happened to waiting for film to develop, being excited to see how pictures would come out, and to sitting on the couch leafing through photo albums? Are kids’ afternoons of giggling around a tape recorder now replaced with afternoons around a Webcam or video games? How did the lovely and useful skill of writing cursive start down the path of the dinosaurs? Is texting the new cursive?
Don’t get me wrong. I have an extra hard drive just for our kids’ digital pictures. I’m hesitantly reliant on my smart phone and can text with the best. But when did having a new technology on the market mean that you all of a sudden couldn’t even buy its predecessor in a store? Does it seem to anybody else like we are as quick to casually dismiss or replace ‘old’ technologies as fast as new ones are developed, without thinking of what we just left behind or the implications of it being gone?
What does all this mean for kids? How can we, as parents, ensure that our kids both value and learn to enjoy the things we loved as kids, and learn that having something new and shiny doesn’t mean the old thing is crappy junk? In this uber-technology-smartphone-on-every-palm world, its a growing challenge to us all to place a much higher value on interacting and playing with other people instead of screens or devices.
For me, I may have replaced my beloved 35mm camera years ago, but I still like to buy music recordings I can hold in my hand (on the soon-to-be-ancient CDs). Even if I have to buy it online, I am determined to get my daughter a tape recorder for her birthday, and I’ll be a monkey’s uncle if that girl doesn’t have a beautiful cursive signature to show off when she’s grown. I might even go to a real book store and buy a real book to help me teach her cursive.
About Mary Beth Cox