why obsolete?

why are polaroid cameras and pictures becoming obsolete? i can remember them from my earliest birthday in memory... i would be sitting in front of my cake at my favorite restaurant (probably pizza hut or something) and the waiter would sing happy birthday to me and then snap the picture. he would place it in a fragile, little paper frame and stand the picture right in front of me. we were told to blow on it and shake it to make it develop faster. those were the days. remember how great you thought the pictures were?! what about when you would have the birthday parties as your house and as you were swinging to hit the pinata, your mom would snap a picture of you... and that memorable sound would resound in your head. i can still here it now: snaaap... ehhhrrrr... plllltttt... and all of the sudden a picture would spit out of the front of the camera. i remember i would just rip the picture out of the old-school machine and run around and shake it. then, when it was ready, i would show it to everyone with pride.

now look at today. i was babysitting this past friday night at a party. i was supposed to keep the little kids "contained" while the mothers ate and drank happily. i started taking pictures of the youngest one... about 20 months old. i would take a picture of her and immediately she would run over to me wanting to see the digital image of her photo. it amazed me that she knew what this little machine i was holding actually did. she would then say "no... that one no good" and signal me to take another picture of her due to her limited speech abilities.



even the older girls knew how to place boarders on the digital images and how to zoom and delete. it really shows how technology infiltrates the minds of youth. so, it's not that i don't like the sophistication and ease of the new digital cameras but that i miss the old-school sound and memories that surround the polaroid camera...