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I realized today that VHS is dead (relatively speaking), at least in the impression of this humble panther. I suddenly realized that I had come to the conclusion when I was considering purchasing a few of Unkle Kage's Story hour videos, and I noticed that the earlierst two were not availible in DVD. I was rather shocked, momentarilly appalled at the thought of having to hook up my vcr again (I have enough cables around the back of my computer/tv already). And that's when I realized that at some point... the VHS medium has died for me. As concretely as cassette tapes and 5' floppies ( I still refuse to build a computer without a 3.5 floppy drive).

When did VHS die? Is this a personal thing that happens for each individual as technology evolves, or a more economic thing and everyone just follows along where the corporate sticks are holding the carrots?

I can tell pretty well when cassettes finally died out. They were battling hard on life support against portable cd players, but staying alive due to non-skippage... Then the defauly tape player in the car became a default cd player. You can play cds on a tape player via adaptor, but you can't play tapes on a cd player. That was when tapes finally and completely died for me.

Does anyone know when VHS died for america? or if it hasn't yet, has it died for anyone else? Can anyone even tell what I'm rambling about?

They were 5.25" floppies, not 5'. The biggest magnetic disk I know of was 12", which is 1'.

Nyamaza wrote:... Is this a personal thing that happens for each individual as technology evolves...

Coming from a someone who owned an 8-track stereo as well as an optical drive for his IBM clone, you just have to deal with the fact that technology will continue to change things for us as we get older. Imagine what it's like for a centarian.

I was talking with a veteran from WWI who was regaling me with how crazy he thought the idea of contraptions like those early cloth-winged, wooden-propeller airplanes were. It was "everyone's notion at that time was why throw away your life when there are safe and reliable trains plenty speedy enough". He witnessed American cities turning over from pedestrians and horses to cable cars and automobiles. He remembers when electricity become a household convenience, radio became the focal point of the home, television replacing radios and ice-boxes becoming refridgerators. He says he misses the days when barber shops were family businesses run by life-long barbers that took the time to know their customers and community (I miss them, too), that the butcher and baker ran seperate shops instead of being part-timers in a supermarket, and everyone actually spent time socializing with their neighbors. Can you imagine what things were like when he was a kid? Yet he confessed to not being able to keep up with the change in technology (and society) during the 60's. I still remember him letting me in on something he considered laugh out loud funny: email and instant messaging is just the telegraph all over again. That old man is gone now, he passed just this fall.

I don't know at what point a technology dies. The automobile hasn't had a major brekthrough in technology nor a successor vehicle in the last sixty years; I don't see that circumstance changing any time soon. Meantime, I'm seeing cash actually disappear from general use in our society with only those bent on criminal activities focused on cash only businesses (mostly to avoid paying taxes). Apple computers still plug along despite a dearth of program variety, but IBM's OS and PCs have gone away. *shrug*

Apple is alive because it is A: A self contained monopoly, B: User friendly to the point of sickness, and C: Has made a deal with the devil to own the general collective of every board of education known to man.

http://www.idrewthis.org/2005/vcr.html

Oh, and apple is alive because absolutely anything, possibly including a sharp stick in the eye, is better than using windows.


--Randy

Neh. I prefer about anything to Apple; Windows is usable because I don't have the time or energy to learn a new OS, and nothing runs off of DOS any more. I'll never like it, but I don't especially dislike it either, provided Microsoft isn't destroying another third party...