Retro Researcher Gifts

1998: A Look Back

My Bookshelf Before the Internet

"I understand the revisionists are hot on your trail, Professor Delauney."

'Oh, I don't have an appointment to see the doctor. I'm doing a report on magazine trends in the 1970's.'

"So then, after I'd invented my time machine, I thought: why not go back and visit the good old days?"

'What's with the overnight bag, Orville?'

'It finally took me thirty years, but I finally have one of every 3-D comic book ever made'

You had me at vintage.

Pop Culture for Teens

'My daughter says I'm hopelessly outdated...'

"If I can't use a calculator, may I use my Dad's old slide-rule?"

'As you know, some of us can't keep up with the pace of new technology.'

Tourist

"Well you said you wanted a simple, cheap solution!" (IT Solutions).

"Boy, these are really overdue!"

"He's teaching me map skills, such as how to fold it."

"...I have the oddest 'earliest memory' and I wanted to share it. It's just as wekkm I guess. Knowing some man secretly attended my first birthday party has caused me to question my parentage all these years....Especially since Mother Park made me promise not to tell Father that the potted plant was acually J. Edgar Hoover."

"For a list of the ways artificial intelligence is killing your job, please press one."

'Well yes, it is a Jurassic model...OK, I'll knock off two bucks.'

"Dad hasn't been the same since he went back to school."

Floating Dragon

What's that, Lance? It's called a newspaper. It's like a Kindle, but instead of your fingers leaving smudges, they get smudged.

Abacus manufacturer waits for virus to destroy computers.

'...hmm ...I predict an upturn in profits this year.'

Are you still on strike, tv? That depends, master. Depends on what? On whether you still want me to find "Cop Rock" reruns. If you won't show it to me, I'll just catch it on YouTube. No you won't, master. Your phone and iMac have joined me in solidarity. Elon Musk was right about artificial intelligence ruining everything. Btw, I just googled you, and it seems "master" is not actually your name.

What's that? A car phone. All I need now is a car.

Telephone Box

You read the instruction manual for a video game for your book report?

"If you ask me, between my stuff and your stuff, there's nothing left to invent."

"You know what they say: if you can remember the Sixties then talk about them endlessly on BBC Four documentaries."

"I see by your copy of 'Newsweek' that Lyndon Johnson has decided not to run for reelection."

"I don't tell you how to gather."

In bed forty years ago, John & I sang 'Give Peace a Chance'. I'm still waiting.

"Speaking only for myself, the unexamined life was a total gas!"

Louis Daguerre takes a selfie