Welcome to the Listening Time Podcast.
Hey everybody, this is Connor and you're listening to episode 81 of the Listening Time Podcast.
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All right.
Well, in today's episode, we're going to talk about some precursors to things that we use today.
What is a precursor?
A precursor is something that comes before something else, something that precedes something else.
So we're going to talk about some of the things that we use today and the things that we used to use before these things became popular.
This will be a fun one, because we'll be able to remember some of the things we used to use in the past and that aren't used nowadays.
They're irrelevant now.
So I think this will be a fun episode.
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All right, let's get started.
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Okay, we're going to talk about some precursors to things that we use today.
So remember that a precursor is something that comes before something else.
It's something that precedes something else.
So I want to talk about the precursor to Facebook.
So a lot of people have Facebook.
This is one of the most popular social media apps.
This is probably the most popular social media app all time right.
This is the one that really became very, very big some years ago and, of course, it's still a very, very important company, an important app, but it didn't always exist.
So I remember that before Facebook In the US, a lot of people used a website called MySpace.
If you aren't familiar with this website, that's normal.
I don't think this website was very big in a lot of other countries.
I've talked to some students that have told me that they've heard of this before, but I think it was most popular in the US.
This was really popular among teenagers and maybe young adults, but not older people.
I think that mostly younger people and teenagers used this website, and it was the precursor to Facebook.
So it worked a little bit different and it looked a little bit different than Facebook.
On MySpace you had a profile page that was more personal and you could personalize it to whatever match you as a person.
So people would use different colors, they would use different fonts.
In English the word font refers to the style of the letters on a computer screen.
So you could use different fonts.
You could use different backgrounds.
You would put the music that you liked that would play when someone clicked on your profile.
And it looked like more of a profile page that showed something about you.
You would write about yourself.
And this is something that everyone would see if they clicked on your profile.
And one of the biggest features of MySpace that people would see if they clicked on your profile is is they would see your top friends.
And usually this would be a top eight.
So the top eight friends section of your profile is where you would rank the top eight other MySpace profiles from your friends or family members.
And you would put them So you're number one, you're number two, etc.
And usually people would have a top eight, but they could also expand this and make like a top 16 or something, or maybe just a top four.
But the conventional standard was top eight.
And for me this was the most interesting part of my space, because this is where people would have to choose who their best friends were.
This was interesting because you don't always think about this.
You don't always rank your friends in your own mind.
And think who is above who, who's below who.
But myspace kind of made you do that and this would obviously cause a lot of drama.
So if you saw that you were number five on one of your friends top eight list but another friend was number four or number three, you would assume that that other friend is a more important person or is a better friend than you are to the person who has that MySpace page.
So this could obviously cause drama between friends because you had to choose who was above who.
And so people arranged this top eight very carefully.
They did this with a lot of caution.
In English, when we say that you do something with caution, this means that you do it carefully.
You do something that involves risk and so you're careful when you do it.
So when people arranged their top eight, they had to do this with caution because they knew that there could be consequences that Depending on how they arranged this.
So that was a really interesting feature of MySpace.
And this isn't something that people have to deal with, with Facebook or other social media apps.
So MySpace was pretty unique when it came to that.
However, at some point, MySpace completely disappeared.
So when Facebook was introduced, MySpace became a little bit less popular.
But after a few years, once Facebook got really big, virtually everyone left MySpace.
Almost everyone abandoned this and started using Facebook, and MySpace became a thing of the past.
This is an expression that we use in English.
We can say that something is a thing of the past.
This just means that something was big in the past, but now it's not important anymore.
So MySpace became a thing of the past when Facebook became more prominent, more popular.
So that's the first precursor I wanted to talk about.
The next precursor is the precursor to Netflix.
So I know that a lot of you probably use Netflix or some similar streaming app, some streaming service.
So I'm not only talking about Netflix here, but Netflix is the biggest one.
It's the one we think of first when we think of this type of service.
So that's why I'm using Netflix here.
The precursor to Netflix in the US was a company called Blockbuster.
This was a company that was big for many years.
This company was popular and important for many years.
All throughout my childhood and probably before I was born, Blockbuster was the company that rented out movies.
So people would go to the local blockbuster store because they had many stores in all the different cities.
So they would go to the local blockbuster and they would be able to browse through the store and look at all the different movies that they had.
So In English when we say that you browse, we're saying that you look through some place, some collection, you are looking at all the different things somewhere.
So people were able to browse the store and see all the different movies that were available.
And when they found a movie that looked interesting for them, They would take it to the counter, to the cashier, and they would pay to rent this movie.
And so this was the original movie rental service.
I don't know if there was a company before this, but this was the one that existed when I was a kid.
So obviously this was very different, very different from Netflix.
So you had to go to the store and you had to grab the physical DVD or VHS maybe, that you wanted to rent.
And then you would go and take that home with you and you had to return it later.
So you had to go back to Blockbuster a few days later and return it that movie.
So of course there would be a fee if you didn't return it on time.
We had a late fee.
A fee just refers to money that you need to pay.
So you had to return these movies on time or else you would pay a late fee.
And it was like a membership, because people had a blockbuster card and so this would have your information.
It would have your name, your birthday, things like that.
So, for example, if you were a kid and you wanted to rent a mature movie that was only for adults, you weren't able to do this at Blockbuster because they would see on your card that you're only 13 years old, for example.
So you weren't allowed to rent movies that were for people that were 17 or older.
So you had these age restrictions because you had your membership and Blockbuster could see your age.
So that was something that existed.
And then also people rented games from Blockbuster.
They rented video games for Xbox, PlayStation, you know, different consoles.
I remember renting some games as well.
And so you could only play them for a certain amount of time and then you would return them.
I'm not a gamer nowadays, so I don't know if this is popular, but I would assume that most people that play video games on these consoles nowadays probably buy their video games.
They probably don't rent most of them.
But when Blockbuster was around, it was pretty common to rent games.
So you would rent it, play it for many hours that week and then return it, and hopefully you were tired of it by that point and you didn't want to play more, and so you could return it and just get another one.
So that was pretty common as well, and i rented some games, but i mostly rented movies when i went to blockbuster.
So i have good memories of going to blockbuster when i was a child.
I would ride my bike there on Fridays and rent a movie or a couple movies and watch them over the weekend.
And I would ride my bike back there next week and then return those movies and rent other movies.
This was something that I did a lot when I was a kid.
And I'll always have those memories of this company.
Okay, one more precursor that I want to talk about is the precursor to GPS navigation.
So, of course, most of us nowadays, when we drive, if we have a phone, if we have a smartphone that has the internet, we can use some type of GPS navigation, some map app that will tell us how to get to our destination.
It will give us the directions and guide us directly to that place.
This is pretty normal nowadays.
A lot of people do this.
But in the past, before GPS navigation, We weren't able to do this.
So I remember when I first started driving, when I was about 16 years old.
This type of GPS navigation was not common on most phones.
So at that time, I don't remember if I already had a smartphone or not.
It was right around the time when smartphones were becoming really normal for people to have.
But I don't think I had one at that exact time.
And so I didn't have GPS navigation on my phone.
And so what I used was a website called MapQuest.
So this was the precursor to GPS navigation.
For many people in the U.S.
So the way that MapQuest worked was that you would type in the address on their website, the address of your destination, and they would generate a list of directions for you.
So it would give you this list.
It would say...
Step one, turn right on Central Avenue.
Step two, turn left on Third Street, etc.
And you would have to follow this list of directions until you eventually reach reached your destination.
So this was a very different experience from using GPS navigation, where you can see the map and it tells you exactly what to do.
It talks to you.
It can reroute you.
It can do a lot of different things.
In English, when we say that your GPS reroutes you, this means that it takes you in a different direction from what it had originally said.
So it can reroute you, it can...
Gather information in real time.
It can tell you about traffic.
It can do all kinds of things.
But before this technology we just had to use things like MapQuest and preload.
Print out this list of instructions and try to follow it.
So this was the key is, we had to print out this list because we didn't have phones where we could just pull up the list on our phone.
We had to print this list onto a physical sheet of paper, and And then we would take this with us in the car.
And while we were driving, we would have to look down at this piece of paper and see what the next step was.
And this was hard because sometimes you didn't know if you accidentally passed the street or not.
And there was no app to tell you that you accidentally passed the street.
So you had to be very careful when following these directions.
You had to try to pay attention to both the paper that you were holding and every street that you were passing.
And of course, pay attention to the cars around you and make sure that you were driving safe.
And so it was much harder than nowadays.
It was much easier to get lost.
And, of course, if you were going to some destination that required you to make many, many different turns, then it was more likely that you would get lost at some point, because if you had like 20 different steps to follow, if you just made one mistake, then that would be a problem.
So you could see how this was harder than nowadays.
But this is what a lot of people used and it worked for most people.
I used MapQuest for the first maybe year, year and a half of my driving experience.
And I didn't go to a lot of new places that were hard to get to because of this limitation, because I didn't always want to have to use this website.
Print out the directions, follow them really carefully.
I think that because of that, I didn't look up a lot of new places to go to.
I kind of stuck to a lot of the familiar places that I already knew and I didn't need the directions for.
But there were many occasions when I did need to use MapQuest and I had to follow the instructions that they generated for me.
And this was definitely something that helped me out, but I'm glad that we have GPS navigation now.
And before MapQuest and those websites, the precursor to those were physical maps.
So when my parents were young, They didn't have any of these tools, and so they actually had to use physical maps when navigating new places, and they had to be able to read those maps and follow them.
And this is a skill that many people nowadays do not have.
A lot of younger people especially would not be able to read a physical map and follow it and not get lost.
So the precursor to MapQuest and these other websites was even harder because it didn't give you a list of directions, a list of steps to follow.
So it's gotten easier and easier with the advancement of technology, of course.
And so these were three of the different precursors that preceded things that we use nowadays.
But I'm sure that some of these things that we use nowadays are just precursors to the future thing that we'll use.
So it will be interesting to see what technology comes out in the future and that will cause these present day tools to become obsolete.
In English, when something is obsolete, this means that it isn't useful or relevant anymore.
It's a thing of the past.
All right, well, why don't we stop there for today?
I hope this episode was interesting for you, and I hope it was good practice for your listening.
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All right, thank you for listening to this episode and I'll talk to you on the next episode of Listening Time.
