Perspective From Down Under
by Eddie Dy, Batch '66
The list goes on and on. Typewriters are no longer produced. Have you heard about “onion skin” paper or “carbon” paper? Can you buy typewriter ribbons? What about the old vinyl musical records or the cassette tapes? What is a Walkman? What we hear today are the products of called i-things. And I don’t know how to operate most of them. I must be a man from the ancient time.
Even the not so old VHS video players have vanished. About ten years ago, almost every other corner was a video rental shop. They quickly converted into DVDs. And now they are all gone. Time now for those downloads and hard drives. And Hollywood is complaining about piracy and musical stars are coming to town in short intervals for live concerts to make money as their CDs are not selling anymore.
The landline phone networks are shrinking while the cell phone networks are expanding exponentially. Remember we used to say “dial” this number? Not anymore as all phones are now push button ones. Remember the telegram and the Morse code? The young people today have no idea at all how we sent messages in those days and the agony or ecstasy of receiving one.
Almost everything is being changed into new and digital technologies. According to some experts, the printed media, like newspapers, are endangered species. Like this Spectrum, all the newspapers will simply be presented electronically through the Internet. Just recently, Encyclopedia Britannica announced that they stopped producing the book version of about 24-volume set but they will still be present in almost all the homes in the form of CDs. And that was after 244 years in business! Who would think that the entire book collection of a regular size library could be compressed into one e-book?
As I drive around Sydney these days, there are always the old analog TV sets that are heavy and bulky which are placed on the sidewalks to be discarded away. And all of them are still in good conditions. Just because the deadline for our switchover to total digital high definition signals is almost upon us. Charity organizations like Salvation Army don’t want them either! Home movies are now mostly part of a modern home.
Kodak, the company that existed from 1880s and its brand being adopted into the local generic language which had anything to do with photography, such as magpakodak, kodakan, nakodakan, gikodakan and many more, had applied for Chapter 11 in Bankruptcy Act. Imagine that! They had dominated the film
market for more than a century but had to surrender the game because all cameras now don’t use any film! We used to joke - “Wala may film imong camera.” If your camera these days has film, then the Gen-Y would surely wonder from what planet you came from. They have not seen any camera with films! No more
Kodak Moments!
Kodak, the company that existed from 1880s and its brand being adopted into the local generic language which had anything to do with photography, such as magpakodak, kodakan, nakodakan, gikodakan and many more...
In the US, they are closing a great number of their traditional post offices throughout the country. Philatelists must be worried with the days of postage stamps being numbered. People are no longer writing letters the old fashioned way. How sad! It is now either Internet e-mails, texting, Twitter or Facebook. For me,
personal letters written by long hand from a person will always be much treasured in the long run than the electronic ones, especially those love letters. Take this story I heard recently: A woman was telling about her old mother now in her late 80s living in a nursing home. Every time the daughter visited her, the mother would just request her daughter to read to her the love letters her late husband wrote to her many many years ago. And the old mother had a big bundle of them. How touching that was! Could electronic mails ever be as
romantic as that? The personal touch is absent.
What about the ancient Chinese Abacus? This was the distinguishing office device in any Tsinoy-ran enterprises. I am sure in our generation of Tsinoy, we no longer use this 4,000 year-old device in doing calculation. Perhaps not even in China. I am sure a simple calculator is more convenient and easier to use. But the ancient abacus and electronic calculator should not be compared that way. Abacus involves special skills. It creates some rhythm or musical click and clacking sounds at various rate of speed when those beads are being move. There was an art of perfection also involved at the same time one is doing the calculation. One of the things I missed most about my late father was the way he used the abacus. It was just a sight of sheer delight.
It is lamentable that because of some modern technologies, we might also lose some special skills as collateral damage. Like the lost art of abacus.
by Eddie Dy, Batch '66
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