In the 70s, I was a mere budding teenager whose only goal was to get his licence (a story for another entry) his own super leaded guzzling car, (Unleaded was a loose dog), so he could cruise around and be cool like the Fonz, yes I even had a motorbike or two. But this entry is to give a 70s spin on terms in common use today.
For instance, the mobile phone. Thirty to forty years ago a mobile phone had a range of about 4 feet from the wall or bench top. Unless you pulled the chord from the wall and tossed it across the room in disgust, acka Russell Crowe style. Mind you, if it didn't break from the impact, you wouldn't be able to talk to anyone until you plugged it back in again.
Then there is the PS. Kids today would know this to mean Play Station, but when I was young it was the bit you put at the end of letter because you forgot to say it before, and speaking of letters, they were handwritten or typed, hence the PS (saved you re-writing the whole letter), put in an envelope, a stamp stuck on the front, dropped in a mail box (not an e-mail box) and you waited 6 weeks for a reply! PSP is a jumbled up version of PPS, the second forgotten comment on a letter.
The only X-box I remember from the 70s was the black and white warning in the bottom corner of Playboy or Penthouse or the ilk.
When it comes to the Wii, we did that in the toilet, but we didn't spell Wii that way!
Microwave was a young long blonde haired wanna be surfer's nightmare!
A computer system, if you were lucky to have one, usually had its own building the size of a warehouse and stored a massive 4 kilobytes of information and needed ducted air conditioning to stop it from overheating.
The web was built and maintained by the spider outside your bedroom window, in the corner of your room, under the house, in the bush etc.
Colour TV was the new fad which we didn't get till the old HMV black and white finally gave up the ghost. Plasma was a term used in Star Trek TOS, LCD was an error of letters by someone who was on LSD and the TV took up a whole corner of the lounge room (not much has changed there).
We were pretty oblivious to events going on around the world and usually didn't find out about anything important until days, neigh weeks, after the event. These days we can find out what happened 60 seconds ago, just about anywhere else in the world.
A laptop, clearly is self explanatory. It obviously was the top of your lap, where the fur ball cat could be found, or the lap dog, depending on your fancy. A desktop amazingly was where you put your pens/pencils, assorted stationery, telephone and writing pad.
An iPod referred to your experience with a group of whales, of which there were more of because the Whalers couldn't or wouldn't travel this far away from their home ports. And an MP3 player was a boom box that took about 15 size C batteries to work without being plugged into a wall.
The DS was the initials of an obscenity that you bellied at someone you didn't like.
We didn't have remote controls, we actually had to get out of our lounge chair walk over to the TV and change the channel, turn up the volume, adjust the brightness and contrast (that's about all black & white tv's had). When remote controls made their first appearance in the 80s, they were still attached to the unit by a chord which meant the lounge chair could only be about 4 feet from the TV.
We have progressed from seeing the Movie of the Week on a Sunday at prime time, once a week or going to the cinema or one of the many drive-in theatres to get our special dose of a hollywood blockbuster TO video players and Video hire shops, TO DVDs and now Blue Ray movies that we can buy at will in many shops, watch at any time of the day on any day of the week on Pay TV, or if we are really brave, download off the internet. Don't even think about going to the drive-in, most of them are now car parks or places for markets to gather.
I could go on, but I'd be here all day, But then I am anyway, since I freelance from home. Next entry I might concentrate on internet jargon and the many initials we use to abbreviate what we want to say.
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Phil