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What's a technology that was cooler in its older iterations? (pawb.social)

submitted 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

478 comments fedilink hide all child comments

I don't mean BETTER. That's a different conversation. I mean cooler.

An old CRT display was literally a small scale particle accelerator, firing angry electron beams at light speed towards the viewers, bent by an electromagnet that alternates at an ultra high frequency, stopped by a rounded rectangle of glowing phosphors.

If a CRT goes bad it can actually make people sick.

That's just. Conceptually a lot COOLER than a modern LED panel, which really is just a bajillion very tiny lightbulbs.

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[–] [email protected] 35 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Clothing and towels made with asbestos fabric. During the middle ages you could clean them by throwing them in the fire and they would come out clean. Eventually your lungs would give up on you but for a while you had a very cool way to impress your guests.

[–] [email protected] 27 points 1 week ago (1 children)

.... We (as in humanity) made a lot of cool shit before we realised it was slowly killing us.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (2 children)

And we’re still making stuff and slowly realizing it’s slowly killing us. Isn’t that neat?

Maybe one day we’ll have it all figured out. :p

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 week ago

Usually it’s killing us slower though. I don’t know if that’s progress

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 week ago

Or we'll keep chasing horizons that will forever be deadly but cool.

But now we're leaving "this old invention is cool" territory and getting into "humans are space orcs" waters.