The Early Technological Days

Looking back on the late 70s there was an explosion of new technology, most of it destined for the rubbish dump. However, some of the innovations paved the way for today’s entertainment landscape. I will concentrate on two in particular.

Pong was the first game that was playable through a screen. It was the simplest of games, with one or two rectangular rackets or bats on each side of the screen and a square ball to hit. The name indicated that it was based on table tennis but the markings on the game reminded me more of tennis. I got this game one year in the late 70s, and it started off my computer gaming life in the way it would continue, namely badly! I was rubbish at this game as I have been at every single computer game I have ever owned or played. If my cat had had opposable thumbs she would have beaten me 🤣! I genuinely can’t remember winning a single game and it started gathering dust after a few months of frustration. The reason I miss this piece of technology is simply that I would love to try again and see if I could actually win a game!

The other piece of technology I miss is the VCR which completely changed life as we knew it. With this technology, of which my Dad was a very early adopter, you could get a programme that you would have missed a few weeks before recorded and sit down to watch it later. Not long after it became possible for you to watch films at home thanks to video rentals. I know what you are thinking, ‘We have space for hundreds, perhaps thousands of hours of recording on the new set top boxes, so that must be better’. Well, the advantage of the VCR was the tape that you could keep and rewatch was yours. Yes, they degraded over time, but they were in fact quite robust. Now, you pay for a digital copy that can be taken away from you at any time or you stream a film or series that just disappears or you have a situation where a film or series freely available on video tape disappears. We used to have power over our own home entertainment but we have given that away and are now at the mercy of businesses who only care about the bottom line not the customer. Blockbuster failed, Netflix succeeded and things went downhill from there. All hail the VCR, the democratising piece of technology that gave us power for 20 years or so before we gave it up for virtually nothing in return.