Thursday, March 03, 2011
KA-CHING!!
I mostly find David Pogue, the too cool tech man at the NYTimes, really annoying but today, he hits something right on the head.
The Fading Sounds of Analog Technology
Digital is silent.
Pogue lists a number of sounds we will never hear again. The cash register is one. Actually, I have lived with three kinds of registers. The "kachung or kaching" kind and the kind with a motorized/manual setup. Hit the keys and the motor runs the tape out. Or use a crank if there isn't any power.
Now the digital.
He doesn't mention some other sounds that are gone. The sound of a watch ticking (still used on 60 Minutes) or the sound of someone picking up the receiver on another line while you are talking on yours. Impossible to mask. I tried when I used to listen in on my cousin Charles' party line. Those were already fading then. 1948?
My husband has a ring tone on his phone that sounds like the old dial telephone. I mean the big ones before the "princess" type. A real bell.
My ring tone is the classic doorbell sound. Ding-Dong.
We still have one of those, an analog doorbell. But it buzzes. Still. It is analog. Not likely we will ever have a digital doorbell but you can get them in the wireless things (that don't really work all that well) you glue to your gate.
Nostalgia. It is good for what ails us.
Some day there will be systems that are different than digital. Nano? Maybe they will make a noise but don't bet on it.
