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.
CDs and DVDs, because ownership beats convenience when you can get them second hand for pennies on the pound
Also:
FUCKING LASERS DUDE! Lasers will never NOT be cool.
Why are the kind of holograms made by lasers not cool anymore? They’re just on credit cards and currency now. I always thought those were awesome. There used to be a hologram museum in Chicago when I was a kid. We went up there a few times and I always insisted on going.
The best ones were holograms of microscopes or telescopes and you could actually look through the eyepiece and see something through it!
And the technology has evolved that I can actually record and re-record to these plastic discs using lasers and it all fits inside a 1cm-tall drive that sits on my desk. And if the manufacturer uses high-quality materials, the disc will last hundreds of years.
Also some discs I can then either ink-print or laser-print on the top of it? Simply amazing.
I miss the satisfying act of slapping a cassette into a tape deck, then snapping it shut.