Oh the wonders of technology

The freedom to carry your DRM free music tapes around with you and easily lend them to your friends is sadly not in my pocket.

☠️ Yo ho, yo ho...
- And a bottle of RAM
- Bikuso no sake o--wait wrong pirate.
Buy DRM free music instead of streaming it.
- Not all the artists provide it. At least through legal methods.
Well if you go apple you don't, but freedom is on Android. Flac is awesome
- nah just convert them to ogg/opus unless you're archiving music. there's literally zero perceptible difference

Have that stuff looks like duplicatous audio reproduction technology and what's in my pocket doesn't sound nearly as good as that boom box likely does.

Also that thing in the right looks maybe like a radio and there are streaming emulators, but still no actual radios in most of our pockets unfortunately.

I had an Nokia, my last “featurephone” before I got my first smartphone, which actually had an FM tuner built-in. It used the headphone wire as an antenna as far as I recall. Quite neat, not that I ever really used it, but it was perfectly serviceable. And a great way of having music on the go in the days before streaming music was widely available.
- One of my first smartphones could do that as well. I don't pay for streaming services and I don't have infinite data like most people seem to have, so I dearly miss that kind of feature. The corporate overlords have decided that free is bad.
- Honestly you didn't miss much. I used the one in my phone for a couple weeks at work until I found out I could get way better reception out of just about any dedicated portable radio. I think the headphones as an antenna thing works best when you're fairly close to a transmitter.
Some androids have fm radios and it uses the headphone cable as an antenna.
I had a Motorola that did it and I think my workphone has it too.
- I recall my last phone didn't need the headphones plugged in for the FM to work too bad it was super fragile causing the screen to shatter without getting dropped or touched durability aside I quite liked my old Motorola
Weirdly, I'm pretty sure Qualcomm chips still include an FM tuner. Most manufacturers just decide not to enable it and hook up the antenna.
- That would be a bad ass hack to enable on a modern phone.
I still have FM on my phone. Poco X3 Pro

Pretty sure 3 sets of headphones aren't in my pocket

They're in your bum, aren't they?
- Its called a prison pocket so apparently they dont have 3 sets of headphones up their ass. Fucken weirdo.

I know this is a shitpost, but a lot of those things in the picture do the same thing etc: The boombox, the walkman, the CD player

They all played music but they didn’t serve the same purpose, thus why I had all three. The CD player was for listening in my room, the boombox could be brought anywhere, and the Walkman was for privately listening on the go.
I think the point is that the formats have basically been unified into fully digital formats. Though we still use Bluetooth speakers to replace boomboxes and audio stacks.

That's why I like cargo pants. Carrying all this antiquated technology around would be hard as fuck otherwise.

Actually they removed the FM radio

Not from every phone, when I was looking for a cheap phones, a lot of Chinese brands still had FM radio.
- Yeah the cheaper phones usually still have it.
My few years old Galaxy A71 has a radio.

Sometimes I wonder, are we truly better off? Yes, it's really cool that I have one device that does it all; but am I really happier? Is my life really any better because of it?

GPS.
Unless meant, like, cumulatively. In that case it's more dependent on your choices than the tech itself.
- GPS used to come in standalone devices though, so it's not like it'd suddenly become uninvented because we ditch the idea of an all-in-one pocket computer.
Yes. My life is objectively, measurably, better because of the smartphone in my hand.
- I don't know that mine is. I will never know what it's like for people to not expect for you to be available 24/7 as a result of smartphones.
There are elements to life that have drastically changed for the better, to name one example how about not just being able to hear your local radio stations, but radio from anywhere in the world.
The fact that I can tune in live to... say BBC Radio 6, and be listening along to the exact same thing they're listening to in a city like London, makes a measurable positive impact in my night-owl life. It emotionally makes me feel more connected to the outside world from where I am, and that's one station out of hundreds of thousands, if not millions. I can explore the world.
Another example is that I can now understand (to the extent that each step makes sense to me) the physics theories and laboratory experiments that have changed our paradigm of reality itself, thanks to a whole bunch of science content creators on YouTube; it is incredible what can now be explained in relatively (ahem) simple language, and it is, by people doing the explaining as a labor of love.
People have found ways to express in mostly non-technical language what a couple of decades ago felt like abstract numerical gibberish wherever one looked. I find this spectacular. And inspiring.
These new tools that have been put in our hands are astonishingly powerful and profound. Yet of course, they can be both either used or abused. Here, I am focusing solely on the "used" side.
- I think people are misunderstanding my point. It's not the existance of the internet, or YouTube, phones, cameras, etc. It's the fact that we're connected 24/7 and people tend to treat you like a weirdo if you disconnect. My question is if we're truly better of with technology where one device does it all (creating the expectation of constant connectivity), or if we'd be better with having a phone that's just a phone, a camera that's just a camera, etc.
  To be clear, I can see arguments both for and against it. If phones didn't come with cameras, then cameras wouldn't be as widespread. It's because of how widespread cameras are that people have become more aware of police brutality. Additionally, because phone cameras are so common, it makes it easy for people to get into photography or filmmaking as a hobby. So in that sense, having a camera in every pocket is a good thing.
  On the other hand, people have this weird expectation that, because you have a smart phone, you should always be reachable. The result is that people get worried or weirded out when they can't reach you. They want to know why they went straight to voicemail, or why it took you a while to respond to their texts.
  It's also a lot easier to get addicted to things like social media when stuff like that can follow you wherever you go. On the one hand, it's nice to have my friends in my pocket. On the other hand, my pocket rectangle regularly causes me anxiety due to the constant stream of news. I could disconnect, but then I'd be "living under a rock".
  Another pro, on the other hand, is that my handheld minipc is able to stream music, movies, TV shows, etc wherever I have a cellphone internet connection. That's pretty awesome. I don't need an iPod to listen to music, a portable DVD player to watch a movie, or a laptop to watch YouTube.
  So I mean, I'm not really opposed to having an all-in-one device that fits in my pocket; I'm just questioning if they're really that healthy. Like, is the trade-off worth it?

TIL I have a vcr recorder on my pocket

There's an app for everything!

I could think of a lot of things I could use a little pocket guy for. Getting my phone when it falls through the crack between the cushion and the arm in the easy chair, for example.

Hmm, pocketable mech keeb? 🤔

Pocketable IBM model F keyboard sounds rad for typist (no pun intended).

Not the printer part of the old word processor/electric typewriter (not sure which it is.)

Where do I get a pocket VHS player?

You jest, but the industry was pretty close to having something like that. VHS-C format tapes are the key, as they were used in lightweight camcorders back in the 90's. The viewfinder used an active screen, so this could be used for playback anywhere.
If we ditched the optics and stretch the definition of "pocket", this is basically that: https://www.ebay.com/itm/386925509292?chn=ps&mkevt=1&mkcid=28
Amazon

This feels like a Tim an Eric skit.

And now we are pining for the old days again.

Speak for yourself. I'm looking to spruce up the future.