I'm so old, I once got excited about . . .

my new polaroid camera, 8 tracks, and sputnik

The computer that our college science department built -- it was bigger than my living room, and wonder of wonders, it could play chess!

Oh, and getting our first television (B&W, color wasn't even on the horizon). We watched Winky Dink and Ding Dong School, and early on Sunday mornings there was The Big Picture. Programming was limited....

My family's first color TV! (my folks were tightwads and thus were late adopters of most new technology, so this was in the 70s)

A brick-sized cassette tape player I could lug around with me to have music anywhere.

Commodore 64 computers! WOW, the friend who had one was sooooo lucky.

Sensurround™ in movie theaters.

The first Mac computers. Even bigger wow! A computer you don't have to spontaneously know a bunch of arcane commands to operate.

Talking cars (the door is ajar).

VCRs.

My aunt's Amana Radar Range (unlike my parents, she was an early adopter of most new technology, so she had a microwave years before my folks did).

the Univac donated to our classroom my senior HS year.

When I had visited every site on the internet

JoeEkaitis said:

. . . the automatic doors at Stater Bros. (local grocer).

. . . my first ATM cash withdrawal.

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Oh, yes. The first ATMs were amazing in a time when bank tellers were the only place you could get money, and banks closed at 3:30, except on Fridays, when they were open until 5. I found that exciting enough that I made sure my first checking account (when I went away to college) was with a bank that had them.

Electronic scanners at grocery stores were impressive when they first came out too.

E-mail was another thing that was exciting when it first came out. The first time I had an account, I was in grad school. Most of the world wasn't on e-mail yet, but I could chat with my dad, who was at a university in another state, and I could flirt electronically with the guy who eventually became my husband.

Amazon was definitely exciting to me when I discovered it in the late 90s. I was working in a tiny college town in Northern NY, and it was the first time I'd lived somewhere that didn't have a frigging bookstore. Someone told me that you could order a book on Amazon, and lo and behold, two days later it would be delivered to your doorstep.

Sadly (and ironically), Amazon's success means there are many more towns now that don't have frigging bookstores

Mood rings, salad bars, Saturday Night Live.

Digital watches with calculators on them, and calculators with solar panels on them. The future is NOW people!

Roxxsmom said:

Commodore 64 computers! WOW, the friend who had one was sooooo lucky.

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We were a C-128 family. Apple can try all it wants to rewrite history - the Commodore was first.

The immortal invocation LOAD "*",8,1 was and will forever be the gateway to the greatest era in computer gaming. (Last I heard, the Commodore still held the record for the system with the most games made for it. And those were full games, not just half-arsed little repetitive ad-filled apps... Considering that the average phone likely has the computing power to run a C-64 game, I keep hoping someone will grab the rights and rerelease them - not the hacked-up, overmodified versions in too many emulators these days, but the real games. Unfortunately, back in those days, EA had some of the best titles, and we all know what kind of company they've become.)

writing my first program on a TRS80

Sat Nam! (literally "Truth Name"--a Sikh greeting)

In the late, late '60s, I got to work on a computer that was actually portable if you had a cart to roll it around. It looked like an oversize adding machine and you could actually program it! And it would do square roots! And of course, it was the wave of the future. (But you couldn't type on it.)

And then there was the lecture I attended about wordprocessing. It was basically a pep talk about how it was the wave of the future...only they didn't say what it was and I didn't know.

Home printers!

But then I remember my grandma, who was raised without electricity or indoor plumbing in rural Missourah. (Her pronunciation.) For whom an icebox was a big deal.

Blessings,

Siri Kirpal

I watched my dad build a Commodore computer from a kit. I remember he had trouble with the programming because he had to type a very long sequence of letters/numbers and on first try one letter wrong meant it didn't work. I have no memory of what it did once he found the typo.

He also built an organ from a kit, that worked nicely.

Our first electric can opener...I had to feed the dog every day!

A car with pushbutton radio and automatic windows! I think it was turquoise chevy with rear fins and bullet-shaped rear headlights. It belonged to a neighbor.

Oh! When Kentucky Fried Chicken had just opened in Australia and my friend bought me a thickshake. I had never had a thickshake before. Oh my giddy aunt!

MaeZe said:

He also built an organ from a kit, that worked nicely.

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Awesome!

Cobalt Jade said:

A car with pushbutton radio and automatic windows! I think it was turquoise chevy with rear fins and bullet-shaped rear headlights. It belonged to a neighbor.

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I remember the first time my parents had a car with automatic windows when I was in high school. It was really cool, except they broke after about a year (it was a Peugeot, so pretty much everything else on the car started to break not long after). Fortunately, those early models had back up hand cranks on them too. Then some genius figured out that if a car has only push button windows and door locks, then the customers will have to pay through the nose to get them fixed when they break.

One thing I remember getting excited about when I was young were digital clocks, watches, and pretty much digital anything. Especially liquid crystal displays. I loved my first Casio watch.

I also remember being thinking it was momentous when I was in third grade or so when our local gas station replaced the analog dials on the pumps with lit up numbers for the number of gallons and the price.

Fruitbat said:

Mood rings, salad bars, Saturday Night Live.

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I remember mood rings! Those were really popular about the same time as were puka shell necklaces and toe socks.

I remember being really loving fiber optic lamps too. A friend of the family had one with a rotating colored light filter beneath it, and I could stare at it for long periods of time as it changed colors, even though I wasn't stoned (being a child at the time).

My mood ring was always brown. I think I broke it by being so cold-blooded! Ack!

Pantyhose. No more ugly garter belts that unsnapped at embarrassing moments, letting one stocking slide slowly down your leg. Pantyhose were a true miracle.
(Do I get the "oldest person in this thread" award? )

Lite Brite.

I didn't get one, though.