7 beautiful technology you remember from your childhood

The Beautiful Sound of Dial-up Modem

Whirrr. Whirrr. Bang-da-bang. Fzzzzz. Wshhhhh. Static-static-static.

Note: The above sounds could also pass off as a half-arsed attempt at dubstep. Moving on…

Ah, c’est la vie. What else can be said about these sounds except that they were music to the delicate ear? Truthfully, you were probably yelling something like “can you stop talking to your friend on the phone? I want to use the Internet la!”to your brother/sister/annoying cousin who was hogging up the phone lines. These were the 90s before the advent of Streamyx, Unifi…or whatever super cool Internet provider everyone uses these days.

ICQ, MSN, and the weirdest display messages ever

Before the era of Facebook, we had MSN. Before MSN, we had ICQ. That little flower-shaped icon, that logo of dual humans circling each other…those were our lives AND the bane of our existence. We were also all weirdos on chatrooms. It was a competition of who could put the most attractive, special-sounding statuses and display names on MSN. There were different symbols, different emoticons, and annoying whistle/knock thingies that you could send to your mates.

…If you were in high school, you were probably one of those trying to attract your crush’s attention. Did you freak out when he logged on? Did you panic when he logged out? Did you throw a hissy fit when you sent him an important message on MSN and he stopped– typed– and stopped again? There, there, no need to be embarrassed. We’ve all been there.

Playing Pinball. Or Minesweeper. Or those…card game thingies. Solitaire? Maybe.

I had high scores for Pinball. No one knew how to play Minesweeper, but everyone raved about it anyway.

We were pretty cool even back then.

Doodling on Paint.

We would have given Da Vinci a run for his money with the amazing masterpieces we created on Paint – especially while we were being bored in every single Computer Class in school. Everything we drew and filled with colour was special, intriguing, and full of artistic flair. Modern art? Pft, who needs that when we have Paint?

Nokia phones with nothing but black and white screens. Oh, and of course, Snake.

Snake was always a challenge. I think my highest score was about 700-800, but then again my game was probably weak. By the way, those old Nokia phones do live up to their legend and are about as tough and hardy as anything else. I started out with one of those and still have it lying around somewhere, functioning as a beautiful alarm clock.

*Cue Nokia internet meme– oh, you know which one I’m talking about*

Pirated CDs.

Piracy was so rampant that it would have made Captain Jack Sparrow proud. Life involved going to the closest pasar malam every week, scouting out for good music and movie deals. The more you bought or spoke to the aunty selling these stuff, the better the prices were. Even when the authorities came cracking down, this trend continued on well until the 2000s before downloading music online became popular.

Bulky walkmans that were the forefathers of iPods and every music player you know of.

If you had one back in those days, you had #swag. ‘Nuff said.