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Shepherd Chimururi Youth Interactive Correspondent

Kodak film, public call box, type writer, Walkman radio, discman, mini disc player, MP3 player, torch, calculator, flipper, clock alarm, photo album, movie house, letter box, camera, vinyl records, voice recorder and dozens more are some of the more than 30 old fashioned gadgets that today’s generation scarcely used or probably only heard of.

They have been wiped out by the ever rising smartphone technology.

Listening to the young generation reminiscing about the technologies they miss or just heard of gives the impression that “ama 2000” as they fondly known have a deep sense of nostalgia.

No one can begrudge them, after all the smartphone which is their life blood is covering their needs from education, entertainment, social and business life.

It is a new culture.

In an interview with Youth Interactive, Praise Ganyo (21) decried how technology has changed the way young people take photos, communicate with friends and relatives, entertain themselves and meet each other.

“For me one gadget stands out. I really missed an opportunity to use a coin-operated call box.

“From the stories I hear from my parents it seems life was funny at the call boxes, especially the long queues that gave people an opportunity to meet and mingle unlike now where by all calls are now done in private,” she said.

She added, “I heard there were also letter boxes at post offices where we would post letters after sticking stamps.

“My parents showed me some hand decorated envelops with fun messages like ‘postman tamba (deliver) fast’ and ‘please kiss 100 times before opening’. The older generation, yes they call us crazy, but their envelop messages are still second to none.”

Desire Tito (21) has his regrets on outdated ghetto community film shows.

“Listening to older guys in our neighbourhood talking about their adventures at Magandanga Hall in Mufakose leaves me green with envy. I hear that they used to even watch all night shows on Friday.

That is where they would meet girls.

But now it is rare to hear people going to cinemas because everyone can download and watch a movie on their phone.”

“However, at family level I still have a dream of using one legendary piece of technology that used to trouble our family which was called a compact cassette tape. We still have some in family archives, but unfortunately the radio that used to play them is dead. From my research the cassette tape was first introduced in 1968.

<The tapes that were made of a brown ribbon would be chewed by the cassette players and people could spend hours putting them back with a pen or cutting off the bad section before stitching with sellotape if they were cut off,” said tito.

In the age of DVDs and USBs, Sifelani Mugwagwa (23) has a surprising a strong attachment to VHS tapes through his parents’ wedding that is stored on the three-hour long tape and the type writer which his father used for typing dockets.

“My parents told me that when they wedded the VHS tape was the trending technology. That was before the introduction of DVDs. Up to now they have failed to transfer to a disc.

“Now they are resisting more because they fear to lose the tape.

“Actually they are proud because it doesn’t get affected by scratches of viruses. Whoever wants to watch the wedding plays it on the old surviving VHS player and it is boring with lots of showers and poor quality,” he said.

He added, “My father told me that he used to aggressively type dockets on a noisy typewriter which needed strong fingers. This device would require alertness of mind and minimum errors because they would use Tipex to erase typing errors. That was also made worse by the fact that there was no spell check or saving and reprinting of the document,” he said.