100 Things Our Kids May Never Know About

Saw this great list over on Wired. Nothing sad about it...just a riot to think of some of high tech gadgetry/technology that I have lived through in my short lifetime. Crazy.

Here are a few of my favorites:

1. High-speed dubbing.
2. 8-track cartridges.
3. Vinyl records. Even today’s DJs are going laptop or CD.
4. Betamax tapes.
5. Laserdisc: the LP of DVD.
6. Scanning the radio dial and hearing static between stations. (Digital tuners + HD radio bork this concept.)
7. Blowing the dust out of a NES cartridge in the hopes that it’ll load this time.
8. Turning a PlayStation on its end to try and get a game to load.
9. Joysticks.
10. Booting your computer off of a floppy disk.
11. Recording a song in a studio.
12. Finding out information from an encyclopedia.
13. Using a road atlas to get from A to B.
14. Doing bank business only when the bank is open.
15. Shopping only during the day, Monday to Saturday.
16. Phone books and Yellow Pages.
17. “Obi-Wan never told you what happened to your father.” But they’ve already seen episode III, so it’s no big surprise.
18. Having to manually unlock a car door.
19. Spending your entire allowance at the arcade in the mall.
20. Relying on the 5-minute sport segment on the nightly news for baseball highlights.

This is just the tip of the iceberg as to how much parenting, youth ministry, education, and our kids have changed over the years. We wonder how we are going to keep up with the changes. How will I keep up with the times? What will the world like in the next 2-3 years (not 10-15 like we used to say)?

But at the heart of even this funny/techy look at how the world of our kids is changing, one fact will always remain the same: they long to be known and loved by real life people (parents, family, friends, and healthy, caring adults in their lives). And you know what? We can do that.