Technology

The graphics jump from PS1 to PS2 shattered my 10 year old brain.

So, a bunch of years back, I stumbled upon a little-known application called Synergy that was fledgling at the time. The idea of a virtual KVM using a client/server architecture completely changed how I was able to interact between my various PCs/Mac/Work PC and it was great.

I'd say the 3DS's screen, and VR. It's mindblowing to even think those are possible and they're very cool to experience, especially for the first time.

Sidekick phone. Complete gimmick, but it was the coolest thing ever.

Going from playing space impact on my nokia to having my next phone reproduce a gif recieved by bluetooth.
Also Wi-Fi.

Wifi. I remember when my family got our first wifi capable laptop and asking my father so many times “So, we can like go anywhere and access the internet???” and just saying “Sure. As long as we’re at a Starbucks”.

Nintendo 64. And yet, I realized not much later on that I liked the older games more, and I still do. My Game Boy and SNES got more use than the N64 ever did. Star Wars Racer was awesome though, and playing Goldeneye with my friends.

Inkjet Printer - We got an Epson Stylus Color with the Compaq Presario 486 SX2 66 and we printed out a relatively low res picture from Encarta. A sopwith pup. The previous printer we had was a dot matrix on a Commodore. It was amazing. I remember my dad said it he was, "thoroughly God damn impressed"

Cell Phone Text Messaging - Had a Nokia that was the first phone that I bought and first cell phone. When I found out that I could text people it was a game changer. Don't have to try and hear what was being said, I could read it. Just friggin' wow.

ICQ - Email was impressive, but instant messaging was very impressive. Still remember my UIN but unfortunately can't login to it (not that it'd work anymore anyway)

MP3s - When I found that I could download music I had to give it a shot. I downloaded a few MP3s over dialup and this was pre Napster days. Backed up the songs on floppy and had to play them in DOS on my computer. I remember one of the first was The Distance by Cake.

Writable CDs - Was one of the first kids in my school with a CD burner (bought it for $240ish) and installed it on our aging computer. Burned a whole bunch of coasters because of the dreaded buffer overrun. Felt there were unlimited possibilities when I could burn stuff to disc.

Divx - Video compression pre-Divx was not great. Divx was the first time it made it feasible (from my perspective) to download good quality video from the internet (we had some horrible dialup).

DVD - The jump from VHS to DVD is something that'll be hard for people to understand if they started with DVD. DVD is fine, Blue-ray is obviously better but not as drastically noticed as VHS to DVD was. My brother worked at Circuit City (RIP) and he got an Apex 300A. We managed to find the secret menu to turn off Macrovision and we were recording rented DVDs onto VHS. Sounds dumb, but it felt revolutionary.

I had Commodore 64 and my friend had a ZX Spectrum, we were both in awe of the games and their graphics, which at the time seemed amazing.

Going from CD's and not really ever having a portable CD player to iPod shuffle was mind-blowing

High speed internet (as opposed to the dial-up we had), the iPod Touch

Seeing a Nokia Communicator phone blew Vulcan's mind (keep in mind, this was a 6-year old Vulcan)

definitely VR. I have only ever used it twice but I can always vividly remember it. My buddy had a Vive in high school and the only time I visited his place I played Robo Recall and had a fucking blast

@s804 I remember that first time that I saw a Sony Ericsson phone.
On those days most cell phones were ugly and gray. When Sony came to the phone space was like looking what a phone should be.

Their designs were clean and came in some well selected colors, walkman earphones were the best is sound quality, but what was the holy grail (IMO) were those cameras.
Cybershot branding was what put Sony cameras in the radar.

Then Xperias with Android came. Felt like using a spaceship in 2010.

How the NES gun could tell where i was shooting in Duck Hunt. I could never understand how it knew, and even once I later learned the answer, I was still impressed.

When I first booted up an Xbox it felt like something futuristic. I would also include having a mini disc player was pretty awesome because of how portable it was compared to a cd player.

Might seem silly but QR codes and Bluetooth, I remember printing QR codes and showing them to my parents, for my 9yo self it was a way to share secret information.

SETI@home

When my teacher said his computer was searching for aliens I thought surely he was joking.

GPS. In the 80s, I learned how to navigate by taking the bearing of landmarks. It took some time and gave you only a general idea where you were.

When I got my first GPS device in the late 90s, it was breathtaking. And at that time, the accuracy was still degraded for civilians.

The idea that a navigation device can show on which side of the road you are on - in real time! -feels like magic.

other than the internet? hmm... cellphones. I grew up in a world where telephones were bulky devices stuck to the wall, or on a short cord, and to call anyone outside of your local area you'd be charged a per-minute fee.

now - cellphones are basically supercomputers in our pockets where you could theoretically call anyone on the planet, if only you knew their number - and everyone has one.

next up is IoT, where everything is connected to everything else, in near real time.

The internet. In particular, being able to instantly communicate instantly with anyone across the planet (early internet chat rooms)

I remember being in 6th grade and my friend told be they just heard about a new hard drive with 1 gigabyte... 1000 megabytes!!! Absolutely blew my mind.

At the same time, I had a weekly allowance of 1 AOL hour, which I never used because the internet seemed kinda pointless.

(Yes, we were nerds)

Email. I was 6 when my dad typed an email to my grandma and then hit send. I asked when she would get it and he said "oh, it's on her computer right now".

Second on MP3 players, specifically the one that was also a USB stick. What, you can plug this straight into the computer! And it fits 256MB, that’s like 5 albums!

I remember the day a friend of mine said: Hey, have you heard of this thing called 'Google'?

TLDR: Every video game system I’ve ever owned.

My first gaming system ever was a game boy pocket, and the cut scenes that played out at the start and ending of the Zelda game took my breath away. I remember wondering if we’d ever see full cartoons on a gameboy. (They actually did for GBA.)

I eventually got an N64 and actually got made fun of by my step brother because I used to disconnect it, put it back into its packaging, and up into my closet every time I was done playing it. Even though I had worked all summer to buy it for myself, we were never financially secure and I couldn’t convince myself that I really had the right to completely enjoy it. At least not until I got used to owning it.

With GameCube, the feeling of the controller blew me away, and I adored the size of the disks. The cut scenes in Tales of Symphonia were like actual anime and I just couldn’t handle that it was coming from my video game system. I used to take it to a friends house so we could watch in awe together.

The Gameboy Advance was first time we could have anything like a SNES in our pockets, and I got the SP, which was a clamshell and oh so pocketable! But imagine what it was like to play a DS for the first time. Not only did had a port of Super Mario 64, but it had an entirely second screen, and it was a touch screen! That little guy was awesome.

Since I'm an old greybeard - BBS's. It blew my young mind that you could connect your computer to another one and communicate with people.

Email is a close second for the same reason - pre-WWW I should point out haha!

The touchscreen.

It was crazy pants that you could have a device and not have a keyboard.

touchscreens becoming so good so quick blew my mind. Seeing how quick it went from clunky stylus palm pilots to fluid smartphones gave me whiplash.

Usenet, I was working at AT&T in the netherlands in the 1980's and we got access to usenet using uucp and dialup modem, Usenet then was a throve of information and innovation. It was (for me) eye opening.

Real time 3d in video games. I had so many questions on how it could possibly be working. Now I'm finishing my master's degree in computer graphics.

Bluetooth headphones/earbuds. Aging myself here, but I got laughed out of a RadioShack as a kid for implying that headphones may not need cables one day. Who's laughing now!?!