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

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

479 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 4 weeks 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 4 weeks 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 4 weeks ago* (last edited 4 weeks 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 4 weeks ago

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

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 weeks 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.