Watching my 2 year old (@ITStrategyBaby) playing with my iPhone last week got me thinking… what technology did I have as a child of the 70s/80s?
Well I scratched my head and thought, and thought, got online and searched for “technology toys 70s” and drew a very large blank.
The 70s brought us icons like: the Muppets (Mah Nà Mah Nà), Space Invaders, Peddle pushers (mine were black velvet with embroidery around the knees!) but could not find (in my m
emory or on Google) anything that we would consider a technology toy today.
@ITStrategyWayne and I debated when Simon Says was created – turns out it was 1978 – it even has it’s own Wiki page.
The 80s however were full of fabulous innovations:
- Personal Computers…
- Betamaxes(!)
- Answering machines
And the not so techie!
- Buckaroo
- Operation
- I had the most amazing sowing machine!
Sorry to sound like a cliché, but we have come so far. My son “doesn’t know he was born” (well he is only 2). If I deny him a glimpse of Finding Nemo on my iPhone or PSP, and try and trade him a jigsaw I get that look.
So, what technology did you play with as a kid of the 70s, 80s or (dare I invite the youngsters into this debate) 90s?
What will my grandchildren be putting batteries into or recharging? Will it be, for example, the minimalistic Touch Cube? And now we are in an “online” world, how will they communicate with each other?
Comments from the floor please…
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Barclay Jones IT Strategy Blog 
You have got me thinking!
I was out to dinner with a friend of mine the other week and her little girl, who is 2 in June, was happy sat in a corner playing some tractor game on the iphone. Then what really amazed me was when she showed me round the phone, highlighting photos she was on & other applications… I could not believe it. The toddler can hardly string a sentance together!!
The future: Great big specs (as they will have damaged their eyes by the age of 3 & natural evolution will not have caught up). But, these will be cleverer than the usual glasses; they will allow the kid to live in a virtual world and become tri lingual as they communicate with their overseas toddler pals. Possibly by ESP….
As a kid – It was packman and Atari for me. And Oh my Sony walkman!!
I can just imagine you, Lis, with big headphones and drain-piped jeans!
I had to do a quick search but I rememebr ‘Pong’! The 2D table tennis game, with paddles that moved vertically on the screen. That was from the 70s. We used to hook it up to our TV. I used to love that game when I was younger!
Also the Vectrex, from the 80s! I even remember the game ‘Spike’ because of the speech effects – can even recite some! Now that’s worrying….
Pong was on TV last night on BBC2 when they were showing pictures of the 70s… did you see it?
No, I missed that! How funny.
The best technology toy I played with was the good old Atari (Circa 1980), I didn’t have one but my mate Ian Hayes did. Eight to ten of used to pop round to his house each week during PE on the cross country run and play space invaders on it. We would then leave one at a time or in allotted groups so we got back to school with the correct time for us. This went on for weeks but his mum found out when we started making drinks and their milk bill doubled. Mr Manning the PE teacher caught the gang there one week red handed controllers in hand, Luckily for me I was excused PE at the time as I just had an appendix operation so I wasn’t caught or punished. I still think it’s a classic game and I still play space invaders now given the chance. The other great perk I had being the headmasters son was that my dad used to bring home the schools BBC computer (circa 1981) during the holidays. One of his teachers had a had a friend who worked for one of the local brewery’s in IT and they could get cassette computer games. My favourite was scramble which was really cool as the only other place you could play it at the time local to me was the local kebab shop on station street Burton on Trent. It took an age to load over 45 minutes (I think) and it could crash at any time during the process, once done however it was brilliant!
You sound like a right rebel!
Hi used a BBC computer and loved my pacman, yellow space ago game which my friends and I had competitions on.
My 2 year old now plays packman on my iPhone which he has been playing with since around 10 months and knows how to take photos, view images and is well aware of the hootlet owl a personal friend of his by all accounts! When arranging my Leeds Card I was instructed to order the one with the owl on the front!
I see our Steve’s children doing homework online, ading images and researching allsorts of information we didn’t even know about at their age! One of them is currently updating her physics homework and using google images and all sorts of symbols in her presentation!
By the time our son is ten he’ll be watching 3D tv and tweeting about his online business! If we don’t allow Cbeebies access immediately as he can now climb up onto the workchair we have a toddler with attitude to contend with! Meanwhile all sheep are now called TIMMY!
By the time he’s 12 there will be glasses and fully automated wii style games which encourage movement.
Vehicles will be powered by our everyday waste!
For me ‘technology’ in the 1970s meant a car! Radical stuff eh! Later on in that decade it meant a colour TV and a telephone – we acquired both these examples of modern tech when I was 16!
Computers were large, noisy, hot temperamental devices that were only to be used by odd people! My how times change! I will shut up now because im getting sentimental!