What's a technology that was cooler in its older iterations? - eviltoast

I don’t mean BETTER. That’s a different conversation. I mean cooler.

An old CRT display was literally a small scale particle accelerator, firing angry electron beams at light speed towards the viewers, bent by an electromagnet that alternates at an ultra high frequency, stopped by a rounded rectangle of glowing phosphors.

If a CRT goes bad it can actually make people sick.

That’s just. Conceptually a lot COOLER than a modern LED panel, which really is just a bajillion very tiny lightbulbs.

  • Pyflixia@kbin.melroy.org
    751·
    2 months ago

    Cell phones, when they had personality. The 2000s was such a good time for them, you had so many designs. Slide out keyboard, panels that can slide, sleek designs, some had actual buttons .etc

    But we’re now relegated to just a varying series of rectangles and squares. Yay…

    • AwkwardLookMonkeyPuppet@lemmy.worldEnglish
      25·
      2 months ago

      I got one that slid up to reveal the keyboard after watching The Matrix, and I thought it was the coolest phone ever. I still have it, and I still think it is pretty cool.

      Edit: it’s not an actual keyboard though, it’s a phone keypad for dialing or sending texts with t9 input.

      It was the Samsung A737.

      It looks like this closed

      And here it is open

      • morbidcactus@lemmy.ca
        8·
        2 months ago

        I still have my Sony Eriksson W580i, also thought it was the coolest thing.

        Still works and holds a charge, pulled photos off of the memory card recently, cameras have gotten a lot better… Had the red one, have had some very brightly colored phones, my favourite being the bright yellow Nokia Lumia 1020


        Had an amazing camera on it.

        • AwkwardLookMonkeyPuppet@lemmy.worldEnglish
          3·
          2 months ago

          Those are cool phones too, especially the red one! Yeah, the old digital cameras used to be junk. I have some old digital photos that look like they were taken on a potato.

        • apprehensively_human@lemmy.caEnglish
          2·
          2 months ago

          I think my favourite thing about those old Lumias was the dedicated camera shutter. The 1020 even had a battery grip case so you could hold it more like a digital camera.