Disappeared Technology

Have you experienced a technology that has truly disappeared? Describe the experience and why the technology disappeared. What replaced the technology in the forefront?

One of the many technologies that has truly disappeared is connecting to the virtual world. I remember my brother discussing with my dad about a piece of hardware that he wanted to buy for his computer, later I realize that piece of hardware was a modem.

connecting to the internet it was a long and somewhat irritating process. I was fourteen years old when my brother bought the first dial up network card. On the card there was a username and password that we had to scratch off and a network number. First, we had to connect the telephone line to the desktop computer and only one computer could connect to one line at a time. Next, we had to open the network dial up connection on the computer, feed the number, username and password to it and dial the number. After a few rings, you would hear a noise that sounded like aliens communicating to the world.  And that wonderful noise meant that I was finally about to connect to the Internet.  The most frustrating part was when the network was busy and you had to constantly redial until you could finally connect! In order to reduce online traffic the government would have discount rates if you tried to connect between the hours of 11 pm to 5 am.

However, today this technology has become so transparent. We expect it to be available everywhere at all times. There is mainly a one time setup for the wireless modem in most cases. Then we can connect as many devices as we want to the same network. We can simply walk into a coffee shop and connect our personal computers to the wireless internet. Moreover, we have the internet on us all the time through our smart phones. The Internet is no longer a mark of luxury as it was when I started using it; it is becoming a necessity. It is impossible to imagine our lives without it.