Does anybody remember cassette tapes?
For many of us, technology has expanded and improved more rapidly than we could’ve expected within our lifetimes. Though it seems like just yesterday that my parents were getting a new internet hook-up at our house, digital technology has since spread into every aspect of our lives—we even consume our music, movies and books through the internet.
Lots of people on Earth today aren’t familiar with almost any analogue technology—especially kids.
In a clip that’s going viral across the internet, three kids discover a set of old cassette tapes.
If you’re scratching your head, cassette tapes were a popular format for storing audio on magnetic tape, all encased in plastic and meant to be played back. They were popular from the 1960s to even the early to mid 1990s. Still, that means that many of today’s children have no experience with them.
The two boys in this video were at their grandparents house and tried to figure them out—all while dad was egging them on.
The kids experiment hilariously with the tapes, trying to figure out how they work.
At one point, the dad asks, “Where do you put the headphones?” The boy points to a part of the tape: “In there!” But the little girl corrects him. “No, you put it in a TV!” she says. Almost immediately, the boy has a reply for her. “They didn’t have TVs back in those days.” The father asks for clarification from the kids: are they saying that the world didn’t have TV sets back in the 1980s? The boys confirm—that’s exactly what they mean.
Although the kids are determined to listen to the tapes, they truly can’t figure out how they work.
Suddenly, one of the kids is struck with inspiration.
One of the boys says that maybe the tape itself is translucent because it plays video that you watch through the casing. The other boy says that maybe there’s an AUX cord that plugs into the tape which is then watched through the two holes in the tape—those are for your eyes, obviously. After a moment of this, the dad asks if they’re actually serious. “I’m deadly serious,” one of the boys says.
After all their effort, the kids never crack it! Dad, can’t you step in here?
This funny video is just another reminder of how much things have changed in our lifetime.
While cassette tapes were probably hugely innovative when they first came out, they’ve since been replaced with many digital technologies like Mp3 players, iPods and later iPhones that put all our music right in our pockets. In another 10 or 20 years, all the things we think of as top of the line will probably be obsolete as well.
At any rate, watching kids try to figure it out is good for a laugh!
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