Dated By Words

“I’ll dial in when I get home from work.”

My first encounter with a modem was an old acoustic coupler my Dad would bring home in the early 80s as part of a briefcase-sized, wood-enclosed apparatus containing the modem and a terminal.

Cutting edge; while I got a modem of my own in the early 90s, I didn’t really ever dial into a workplace (although I supported journos who did); I leapt straight to VPNs over cable modems instead. But I still talk about dialing in, but there’s an ever-decreasing number of people who have any experience of it; soon, like trying to explain using acoustic tapes to save and load programs on my first computer, people will most likely think I’m trying to pull their leg.

“Time to wind up your window, honey.”

The first car I owned had winder-operated windows; my daughter sat in it to have a play before it was taken away to a scrap merchant after a shithead council worker dropped a tree on the rear window and c-pillar; it was a car I loved dearly (and, it must be said, irrationally, since there’s nothing inherintly special about a mid-80s Corolla).

That play will most likely be her only experience with manually-cranked windows, one of us starts buying vintage cars or veers into the world of ultra-light specialised sports/road hybrids like the Porsche 911RS3. Winding the window is, I guess, technically what happens, but the winding is at the behest of the button.

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