How old are your students? I am 14 and I still use floppy disks. Well I do collect old computers but everyone in my class has used floppy disk at least once. My family also had wired telephone until 2009 and we still have our CRT TV. (Not as our main television. For that we have some years old rear projection TV)

Very good observations overall…

@ Roland Bitterli:
It’s not really a myth, at least in Japan there is such law, currently there is pending proposal for similar law in South Korea and even in the USA there was a draft of bill concerning this which was probably never actually proposed (I’m not familiar with proper terminology) – http://www.opencongress.org/bill/111-h414/show

The Windows error noise. I’ve heard it pop up quite a few times already, kinda like the “You’ve got mail!” Voice from AOL, there’s also the Nokia ringtone that keeps popping up in movies and TV even when it’s obvious the phone isn’t a Nokia.

@ Mart:
ok, so it seems to be a myth then (I kind of liked it though…). I haven’t got an iPhone and on my old nokia I could not mute it. The only explanation I found on the vast internet for this was the one I repeated above.

@ Roland Bitterli:

required to build in a sound when you take a picture. It is supposed to make it difficult to “sneak” a picture without anybody realising

But on my iPhone, if I were to mute it, it no longer makes the “camera snap” sound when taking a picture.

How about scanlines in emulators? One can even emulate the density of scanlines (!) in emulators. I wonder who actually plays Genesis games with horizontal scan lines all over the computer screen. Nostalgia? Perhaps. Practical? Hell no!

As far as I know, mobile phone manufacturers (and possibly digital cameras too) are required to build in a sound when you take a picture. It is supposed to make it difficult to “sneak” a picture without anybody realising. I don’t know where I have this from but knowing the quality of products coming out of law school when technology is concerned I would not be surprised if this was actually true…

Lots of good examples! Your description of future generations continuing to mimic these old technologies reminds me of the monkey thought experiment.

Recently I saw some kids playing, they were making a train. With choo-choo sounds and arm movements, you know, like the pistons and rods connecting the wheels. Maybe a diesel is just more difficult to imitate.

@ Nathan:
Well.. that crappy samsung-TFT-screen at work shows snow… even thoug it’s only inputs are DVI and VGA.