Feeling Like A Dinosaur

It's hard not to feel like a dinosaur when you go to look for something that everyone else knows is gone.  Imagine asking where you can send a telegraph message, asking someone at Wal-Mart for a LaserDisc version of a recently released movie or a new video game that you load on floppy discs. That could be a fun joke. (Film it and post the reaction on YouTube.) It's a bit more bewildering when you seem to be the only one who doesn't know it went away.

Clip art did that to me last week. I hadn't looked for the "Insert Clip Art" button for several years. I thought maybe I'd lost my mind, but it turns out Microsoft ended their clip art gallery in 2014. What's worse is that the button I was looking for hadn't been included in MS Office since their 2003 version. My memory told me it would be right there ... after possibly 16 years of not using clip art?

To me, clip art was one of the last things we could share as a culture. It was like a permanent meme we all knew. It was corny, and PowerPoint users had a habit of using the same clip art no matter the subject. Remember "Screen Bean," the black stick figure who would click his heals or have a light bulb over his head? 

B. Dalton Booksellers in 2009.
 

My local Waldenbooks in 2011.
 

I suppose this isn't much different than how I found out the B. Dalton book stores were all gone. In 2011, all Borders book stores closed, taking tinier Waldenbooks with them. Later, it made me wonder where the B. Daltons had gone. All but two had closed in 2010, the last two closed in 2012. By the time I'd done the Google search, they were all closed.

When I was a kid, there was a popular PBS show called, "Reading Rainbow." One of its funders was B. Dalton Booksellers. It seemed like a big deal that the retailer sponsored a national TV show. Because I didn't have a local B. Dalton, I guess it was easy to miss its passing.

U2 special edition iPod (2004).
 

Somehow, I didn't miss the quiet retirement of Apple's iPod Classic in 2014. Most of the music lovers I knew at the time had switched to using cloud services like Amazon Music or Google Music, and they hadn't thought of iPods in a long time. Ten years earlier, when U2's special black and red edition was released in 2004, I saw it as an expensive, antisocial device. Amusingly, this is exactly what critics thought about the Sony Walkman in 1979, and I loved that thing ... even if my tapes occasionally got pulled apart inside them.

There's a certain utility to having 120 GB of music that doesn't need a cell signal or a subscription fee. When I traveled in rural areas without service, I was thankful for my old iPod. Moreover, an iPod is a collection of music I liked well enough to purchase, and even when it faded from my memory, it might return in shuffle mode.

All CDs had this stamp on the cover.
 

The way I listen to music has changed. When it was on vinyl, cassette, or CD, I would listen to an album all the way through. CDs made it so I could skip a song I hated, but buying an album was buying an experience; it was a book of liner notes and other songs I might not have listened to. I'm a fan of streaming, it allows me to discover music and artists I could never have known without it. However, streaming doesn't supply the same depth of experience as a CD or revival that an iPod could. I doubt I'll jump up during a streaming service and shout "I forgot I (liked/favorited) this song!" Streaming isn't yet an instrument of nostalgia for me, it's instant with a short-term memory. I often worry our society is becoming much like that ... no depth.

Don't think that I stubbornly use outdated stuff just for the sake of being difficult. By 2007, you'd be hard-pressed to find a new computer with a floppy drive in it. Even though I still have a box of 3.5" floppies and a couple of iOmega Zip discs, I don't remember being all that sad to see them go. What I do remember is having programs to break up large files to save onto several diskettes. That sounds cumbersome now, and it felt cumbersome then. What I still have on floppy is files I should move to a USB but haven't. It's like anything else in life that you keep because you think you'll use it later. My grandfather had peanut butter jars filled with nails and odds and ends. I guess I'll have old floppies.

The funny thing about clip art is that I hated the new ones introduced in Microsoft Office 97. I thought some of the characters were like creepy Picasso knock-offs. Others were like weird 50s/60s retro pop art. My question was: "When would you use those?" Little did I know I'd see them in every PowerPoint from college classes in the 1990s to workplace orientations in 2018. It felt like clip art would always be there. What I've found is that the popular Cybart characters are nearly impossible to locate. The Cybart character below is the first one I've ever used. It took 22 years, and had I not realized they were gone, I probably wouldn't have a reason to use it now. Still, rest in peace, Microsoft clips gallery. You were weird, and all of my friends knew you.