technology

i used to believe that you could collect email without connecting to the internet

aol cutomer

When I was eight, I first heard about computer viruses and I thought that a virus on a computer was a disease like a common cold in humans. It was the early nineties and we owned an Amiga Commodore; probably the best computer available in those days where the computer programs came on 3 1/2 inch floppy disks. My dad then told me that if you put a floppy disk on write-protected, you will prevent any viruses from getting on the disk, but I did not realize that write-protecting a disk prevents you from saving any files on it. I then thought that if you had a cold and you coughed or sneezed onto a floppy disk that is on write-enabled, you might give the disk a virus. The fact that I saw two Captain Planet episodes where Dr Blight's computer Mal caught a computer virus on the end of two episodes and was sneezing and coughing made me more firmly believe that computer viruses were like diseases in humans. It wasn't until I was sixteen that I realized that computer viruses are programs that are capable of reproducing themselves, deleting files and making unwanted copies of files on a computer to really slow it down.

Anon

when i was little, i liked to watch my dad get ready in the mornings because he always prickled me with his day's growth of stubble. one morning while he was shaving, he "plugged" the electric plug into my upper arm, and pressed the battery button. the shaver worked, and i thought i was getting electrified. later that day at the grocery store, my mom noticed my anxious face and asked me what was wrong. i cried, and told her that my arm had been feeling numb all day.

my dad got yelled at after they laughed at me, but i needed a few more demonstrations before i tearfully agreed that my arm was in no serious danger of falling off.

Anon

I used to think that a "photocopier", was a machine that made duplicates of photographs as good as the originals, glossy paper and all. Ordinary Xerox machines were just plain "copiers".

Anon

not my belief but other kids wrong ideas. When I was in first year of high school I noticed the school library computer had crashed so I shouted to the librarian "the computer's crashed !" A few of my classmates laughed and scoffed at me; "did it crash into a wall?" I guess they were just not into computers exept for playing games.

opinionata

The Fast Forward button on a cassette recorder is often marked simply “F.F.” for Fast Forward. I used to think that was the button you pressed to make it go “F-F-F-F-F-F” (which it is, of course, but that’s not what it means!).

Alan, Sheffield

I used to believe when I was a child that when you sent a fax, the sheet of paper really wentwhere you sent it and came back after the recipient received it.

Alex ritzen 4

I used to believe that if you played a record too many times it would wear it out.

April

Record spins. the outside edge went round at the same speed as the inside edge but the outside edge had further to go so the record had to go round at different speeds to keep up with one another, i just couldn't stop thinking about this.

Agent R

Remember vinyl records and turntables? I used to believe that a tiny band with tiny instruments lived inside the middle of the record and would run up through the grooves and into the arm of the turntable then into the speakers to play their music.

Juicyfruitkisses

I used to believe that you could tell how much room there was on a blank video cassette tape by how much writing was on the label. If the label was completely covered with writing the tape was all full, and if it was only half covered the tape was only half full, and so on. It didn't matter if the person who wrote it just had really big or really small writing, or whether what was on the tape was a movie or just a TV show - as long as the label still had room on it, you could still tape more stuff.

So when I decided to tape my favorite show one day, I chose a tape that only had a tiny bit of writing at the very top of the label, thinking I'd have lots of room to tape as many episodes of my show as I wanted. I couldn't believe it when the tape ran out after only 1 1/2 episodes. Turns out almost the whole tape was taken up by three of my parents' movies that had short titles, but were about 2 or 3 hours apiece. That blew my theory out of the water.

BandGeek

When I was younger I used to believe that the entire computer was present inside the keyboard. I did not realise the truth until much later I was attending a computer hardware course class and I asked the teacher how do all those computer components that she has explained fit inside the keyboard. It is then she told me that computer actually is a seperate box and I felt embarassed in front of the whole class. They were all laughing at me at that time and when I think of it sometimes I also laugh on it.

Mandeep Sahni

When my sister and I found out that we could write emails to Mary-Kate and Ashley, I was so excited and I thought that they would be our best friends! I really thought they would come have playdates with me... nevermind the fact that I was 7 and they were 12 or 13.

nivalep

when i was little i used to believe that when a person was going to burn a cd they actually set it on fire. so when my friend asked me if i wanted her dad to burn my favorite cd for her i said no.

Anon

When I was about 3, I would refuse to have my picture taken because I thought cameras and taking photos hurt!!!

Anon

When I was growing up in the 50s I thought we had reached the Moon - well, it seemed so close! I was delighted to find it might actually happen in my lifetime - and, of course, it did. I am now a space buff, and sometimes think the history of spaceflight has simply been a matter of reality catching up with my childish misconceptions!

Ray Ward

Where I live in Sweden, there is an ice hockey team is named "HV71". When I was around 11-12 years old, my grandmother on my mother's side told me that it was two teams, "'Huskqvarna" and "Vätterstad", who merged in the year 1971 to become HV71. I was born in 1982. One day in the spring of 1994, my dad bought me an old computer from another. The computer was named "Commodore 64", and I thought it was introduced in 1964.

Johan