Cassette Tape… Is that adhesive?

9 out of 10 teenagers and kids alike don’t know what a cassette tape is. Most of them thought that it was just another type of adhesive tape. Showing them an “antique” audio storage media like this one is like showing them a VHS cassette or a Betamax cassette which both became extinct in the usher of the 21st century.

Prior to CD players and MP3 players, most of us who were born in the 70s and 80s had the Walkman. A gadget with AM/FM radio and a cassette player where you insert the cassette cartridge to listen to the music recorded in its magnetic tape. It was an “in” thing during those times to have a large headphone and a bulky Walkman strapped to your belt powered by 4 to 6 AA batteries, if I remember it right! In one cassette, about 6 to 8 songs can be stored. You can fast forward or move backwards… But you cannot randomly jump from one song to another nor jump from the first song to the last song. It was “sequential access” unlike today’s “random access” modes.

Nowadays, listeners just carry a miniscule gadget smaller than a thumb containing thousands of songs (I cannot imagine how these kids can listen to a thousand songs in just a month’s time, geez!). You can randomly select which song you want to play. Headphones were replaced by in-ear phones (What the… Isn’t it gross to have someone borrow your in-ear headphones with a slimy ear wax still covering the tip of the ear bud?). Cassette players are now called MP3 players and some are even played streaming from the internet.

Magnetic tapes are now things of the past from the generation who are already taking maintenance medicines and whose facial features are slowly being covered by creases that are impossible to iron out. As one gadgety generation say to another, “Your gadget shall also pass away… Woe unto you!”