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I was a millennial middle schooler: I was in 8th grade during the Y2K craze.* In addition to all the normal class and club photos, my middle school included a "Year in Review" section at the back of each book. Sections included: lifestyles, music, society, personal freedom, entertainment, sports, science, travel, world news, national news, and faces.
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It was my seventh grade (98-99) yearbook that seems to have created the most amusement (and amazement!) for my 8th grade brother and 10th grade sister. This passage in particular, accompanied by images of disposable cameras**, drew their attention:
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"George Eastman invents the hand-held camera in 1888. Kodak introduces the brownie box camera in 1900 and disposable all-weather and panoramic cameras in 1989. In 1998, Kodak and Intel introduce an all-in-one, auto-loading CD-ROM*** that stores, enhances, shares and prints photos on a personal camera."
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As my sister reflected, "People back then were excited about being able to store photos on a CD!"
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Yes, we were.
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I also recall getting excited about computer-based encyclopedias [like the CD-ROM version of Wikipedia], personal tape decks, and printers that didn't require the pages to be torn apart. Which apparently makes me "old." Ahem.
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Notes for younger readers:
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*Prior to the turn of the century, there was much speculation that all of the computer systems in the world would crash at 12:00am on January 1st, 2000. People feared that computer dating systems would get confused by the "00" and try to make it 1900... which would cause the world to fall apart. [This did not happen.]
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**These were cameras which could be used just like regular [film, not digital] cameras. Rather than take a roll of film for developing, you just took the whole camera to the store.
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***Perhaps some of you are old enough to remember computers with DVD-ROMs, i.e. those which would only play DVDs, but could not be used to create new DVDs. Before that, CD-RW was the new big thing, an upgrade from CD-R, which itself was a brand new concept for those of us used to CD-ROM drives [which could only read, but not write CDs]. Further back, when the world was newly forming, we had these things called floppy disks [there's actually one on my bookshelf right now, but I have no idea where I'll find a computer capable of reading it]. And yes, I'm old enough to remember 8" and 5 1/4" floppies.
2 comments:
I also continue to be completely amazed by what my siblings and cousins do not know. I remember records and still pull them out at times, running to fix them every time they skip while my cousin doesn't know what a record player is. I remember all the things you mentioned. A year changes a lot of things. It makes me feel old. I can no longer hold my sisters one in each arm. Now they are driving. But one year, three years or eternity, some things never change - such as the love and laughter that can stretch across oceans.
Surely the younger folk know these things, don't they!?!? I'm not sure that I can remember the 8" floppies, but it seems like only yesterday I used 5 1/4" floppies......
Also, Y2K did so happen....if you happened to be at a New Year's party with people who thought it would be funny to throw the switch for the house's electricity at exactly midnight and thus scare the poor middle-school aged children who happened to be at said party. Not that I would know anything about this or a certain middle-school aged girl at that party who started crying uncontrollably because she thought that the world was actually ending. So don't ask me anything about that. I wouldn't know.
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