Brian Lehrer: For our last 15 minutes, we're going to have an ode to obsolete technologies. What kind of tech product from the past do you miss because you loved it at the time, or you think what's replaced it is worse? 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692. Again, it's an ode to obsolete technologies call-in. What kind of tech product from the past do you miss because you loved it at the time, or you think what's replaced it is worse? 212-433-WNYC. Here's why we're doing this today, for those of you out there still holding onto your DVD players, the final end to the DVD era may be upon us. Netflix announced that it will be ending its mail order DVD service later this year. Even though subscriber numbers have dwindled in recent years, they've kept up the service since they sent their first DVD in 1998.
According to The Guardian, by the way, that first DVD was Tim Burton's movie Beetlejuice. Now, some of you listening might remember the excitement of getting those red envelopes in the mail when it first began. Maybe you would still prefer to be pressing play on a DVD rather than queuing up a movie to stream. If you're mourning the end of DVDs, this call-in is for you. Do you think we've lost something in our switch to streaming, or do you have a cinematic moment you'll always associate with movie by mail from Netflix? Let us know, to preserve for the ages what that movie moment was that you'll always associate with a red envelope or a Netflix DVD. 212-433-WNYC. Again, this isn't just for Netflix disk users and DVD owners. Maybe you don't miss DVDs, but there's another form of obsolete technology you wish was still around.
Are you lamenting the loss of cassettes and the art of making a mix tape that way? Do you miss popping a cassette or CD into your Walkman? 212-433-WNYC. How about this one, did you get satisfaction out of getting up and actually walking across the room to change the channel on the television or dialing a rotary phone? There's a hysterical YouTube video, have you seen it, from a few years ago, of a grownup showing some teenagers a rotary phone and asking if they could figure out how to place a call with it? Spoiler alert, they couldn't. Anyone miss any era of obsolete telephones or even the word 'telephone' as opposed to just 'phone' on any obsolete technology that you miss? 212-433-WNYC. We'll start with Alex in Montclair. Hi Alex, you're on WNYC.
Alex: Oh, hi. How are you, Brian?
Brian Lehrer: Good. What do you miss?
Alex: Oh, I miss paper maps. I remember going on road trips with my family and having that big map and marking your exit and gas stations and being able to get your destination and feel like you're moving on the map.
Brian Lehrer: I love maps. I have maps posted in my office and I love looking at them, but I am so glad not to have to use a paper map in the car anymore, as opposed to GPS.
[laughter]
Alex: Definitely, when you're driving it wouldn't be a good idea, but it's nice to be a co-pilot and have a job as opposed to always look at your GPS taking you.
Brian Lehrer: That's a good one. Be the co-pilot, be the person in the passenger seat doing it. That's cool. Thank you. Dominic in Manhattan, you're on WNYC.
Dominic: Hi, good morning. What I'm missing is my Blackberry. I know I make everybody laugh, my children, my wife, everywhere I used to go, I had my Blackberry for 20 years, always worked. I liked the text system, sending a text and correcting a text, which when I changed for my iPhone, which is only seven months ago, I realized like older son just iPhone realized that you can finally correct your text. I said, "God, I had that for 20 some years." What a discovery. I really do miss it. My children and my wife, they're all changing their iPhone every three years. It's getting slow. You have to upgrade. My Blackberry worked for over 20 years and I really miss it. I only changed it because of the app. Like Uber could not be downloaded on a Blackberry, otherwise I would still have it.
Brian Lehrer: Oh, it doesn't support Uber. If you had it for 20 years, I'm guessing you were an early adopter. Didn't Blackberry like change everything? It's one of those things when I got my Blackberry, everything changed because it was the first smartphone. It was so addictive. Do you remember it had the nickname CrackBerry because people--?
Dominic: It was a CrackBerry because it was addictive, definitely. It was something new. We got addicted because the game was on it and there was all the funny thing. Also, I did it because of political idea. When I keep hearing about those iPhone, they are made in a country where everybody's borderline abused and not even hardly pay, and I say, "How can I support that? They make us phone for $47 and they were selling it to us for close $1,000 now." I said, "This is something I cannot live with." Politically speaking, I was already on the group that not supporting iPhone for that reason. Again, yes, I miss it. It's as simple as that. Everybody left and it's the first time I have the opportunity to have someone on the telephone who actually may be supporting my idea. I'm not ashamed to speak.
Brian Lehrer: Dominic, thank you. Thank you very much. Erica in Crown Heights. Hello, Erica.
Erica: Hi. Thanks so much for taking my call and I am walking outside, so my apologies if there's noise in the background. What this made me think of is I have a 12-year-old who is newly into Spotify, and she basically just listens to the same things over and over. I remember very distinctly when I was her age, I had a cassette player that only had one side. To make a tape, you had to listen to the radio and wait for the song that you wanted to come on and wait for the DJ to stop talking at the beginning so you could like press play right at the right time so you didn't get their voice on the recording.
We would make these mixed tapes that would take, I feel like, weeks to make because you were waiting for those specific songs. It was like a labor of love. I feel like I spent so many evenings just perched by the radio. Needless to say, not that every song on the radio is fantastic, but you get so much more of like a, I don't know, it's such a different experience than having it all just-
Brian Lehrer: At your fingertips.
Erica: -I only want to listen to this one thing over and over and over.
Brian Lehrer: Do you think-- I'll admit to being a fan of Spotify and YouTube Music and the algorithms, which I find if I put in a track that I like and let it start what it calls a radio station, I often get turned on to new artists and new songs that I don't know in a way that your format of choice radio station now or in the old days might have done or might do. Rather than narrowing my listening, I find that the algorithm expands my listening. You don't find that, it sounds like?
Erica: I will say that I don't use Spotify, but I would say for my daughter, and I don't know if she is typical of kids her age, but she doesn't seem interested in doing that. It's like they're not used to just turning something on and seeing what's there. They're used to lordering the thing that they want to see or want to listen to.
Brian Lehrer: Erica, thank you. Gabriel in McIntosh County, Georgia. Hi, Gabriel, you're on WNYC.
Gabriel: Good morning, Brian. I am a Luddite and a musician and I miss real instruments being the go-to way to express oneself through music, because the ease of technology has allowed our popular culture to develop a lowest common denominator musical aesthetic.
Brian Lehrer: Not to mention jobs for musicians, if you can simulate an orchestra with a touch of a couple of buttons.
Gabriel: You telling me, I'm a pianist and people ask me to play keyboards. "Oh, I have a keyboard, wouldn't that be all right?" I'm telling you, that's like asking a chef to whip up a meal with just a microwave.
Brian Lehrer: You mean, you don't find it fun as a piano player to play different kinds of keyboards that can do different electronic stuff. You see a band these days and the keyboard player has multiple keyboards set to different things, maybe an acoustic piano as well. Do you get some satisfaction from that or no?
Gabriel: Allow me to be more specific. There are many different kind of keyboards. Some are electromechanical, and some are completely acoustic and some are completely digital, meaning that they work on a ones and zeros technologies. Now, those digital keyboards are trying to emulate, and some do a very good job. They emulate the real keyboards, whether they're electric or not, but they just don't get at all the weird little-- I'm not a scientist, so I don't know what happens when you produce a note, but there's a lot more that occurs when there's a hammer and a string, and all those kind of stuff.
I really do think it has contributed overall to a boringness of our musical performance and even consumer culture.
Brian Lehrer: Gabriel, thank you very much. Oh, we have a Netflix DVD user. John in Asbury Park, John, you're on WNYC. Hi, there.
John: Hello, Brian Lehrer, how are you?
Brian Lehrer: I'm okay. For people who didn't hear the setup before, that's the news hook for this caller. Netflix is now discontinuing after all these years sending DVDs in the mail because everybody streams. You still use the DVDs?
John: I do, and it's going to expire in September. My sister from Tudor City in Midtown sent me the notice. I felt like I was getting an obituary about an old friend. I've been with them forever. The reason I got them in the first place is that their movie library is five times larger on the disc than what you could get from streaming, whatever they call it.
Brian Lehrer: Interesting. I wonder if they'll put the whole library online now.
John: That's a possibility. I'm wondering what they're going to do with all those discs, because I'd like to buy some. I have a few more months and then my life is going to be turned upside down [laughs].
Brian Lehrer: John, thank you. That is a good question for a follow-up report. Maybe someone has already done it. What are they going to do with all those discs? Listeners, thank you for your calls with your odes to obsolete technology.
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