No other industry moves as quickly as the technology sector. Inspired by the Remember Singapore blog and the I Remember SG website, I thought I’d write a quick piece about forgotten technologies.

For anyone who grew up in the 80s and the 90s, any form of tech was an unfamiliar but throughly exciting experience, from watching the first 28.8k modem boot up with its incessant beeps and shrieks, to that awkward first social encounter with that kid at the playground asking for a Digimon battle.

 

Web 1.0

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iHW1ho8L7V8&feature=related[/youtube]

Remember that monster of a modem you had to use to connect to this newfangled thing called the Internet? Basically, in order to check an email, you had to inform everyone in your house and the neighbours next door that you were going online. Flavours of email addresses ranged from Hotmail to Excite to Mail.com.

In an era where Geocities and BBS ruled, you would be lucky to get any sort of graphics. They loaded line by line, often freezing midway if the Internet happened to be having a bad day.

Have fun looking at how websites today would look Geocities-fied here.

 

Windows 95

Who can forget the melodic start-up sounds of Windows 95, as well as staring patiently at the colour-changing loading bar at the top of the loading screen. The OS of choice in every MOE computer lab, I remember doing really odd educational exercise programs in school as well as 10/10 PC Tutor at home. At least the latter sent you cool free postcards for finishing your assignments on time. Speaking of which…

Taken from:  http://someawesomeness.wordpress.com/

 

Floppy disks

Games used to be no more than 2.8MB, because they had to fit on one of these. Bigger programs were stored on multiple floppy disks labelled “Part 1” and so on in black tape. For those who took electone classes at Yamaha, the programming for your exam pieces also all fit on one floppy disk.

 

Tamagotchi and Digimon

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Taken from http://www.whotalking.com

Yes, this is a shame-based admission, but I used to own one of these little clunkers. Banned in almost every primary and secondary school once they came out, these were the expensive toys every kid wanted. Cheap replicas with melting batteries were sold in every neighbourhood minimart, rapidly confiscated by exasperated teachers.

 

Public coin/card phones

For some reason there were always terribly long queues for these phones during recess, and I had no idea why. Once the value on your phonecard ran out, with a pair of scissors and some quick modifying you could create your very own discreet rubber band gun. Like so.

 

 

The evolving Nokia

Taken from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Nokia_3210_3.jpg

 

The Nokia 3210 was my very first phone, and I think it could probably still work if I found it. As heavy as a brick and twice as resilient, this phone survived drops like a champ and would probably outlast the human race. Its green-lit screen soon became the epitome of uncool once the Nokia 8250 and its brethren arrived with the dazzling blue screens that could double as a flashlight.

Feel free to share your own memories of technology growing up in Singapore in the comments section below, or on any of the memory websites listed!

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