AT the age of six, one of my sons asked me what computers were like when I was little.

When I told him we didn’t have computers at home in those days, he shook his head and said: “Life was harsh then, wasn’t it?”

Imagine, then, the horrifying scenes that awaited my kids recently when they watched an episode of a BBC4 series called Electric Dreams, in which a modern family are put in a house with the technology of decades gone by.

We saw the episode in which the family were given the gadgets of the 1980s: the first home computers, VHS players, early camcorders, the Sony Walkman cassette player, the first CDs and so on.

Our boys didn’t know whether to be amused or shocked by the thought that if you were lucky enough to own one of the first micro-computers, you had to plug it into your TV (probably the only set in the house) – and that you either had to load programmes laboriously from a cassette tape or type the instructions in yourself.

And when they got a glimpse of life with three TV channels – when children’s programmes were only on for a short while a day – it was as though they were looking at a documentary about the Victorian workhouses.

That said, I find children are fascinated by the technology of another area. Yes, they wouldn’t be without the Nintendo DS, but they’re equally intrigued by typewriters, record players, Polaroid cameras and anything analogue.

It got me thinking about all the experiences which we once took for granted but which have disappeared from our modern world...

We no longer get our photos back from the chemist with those stickers on them telling us why they came out looking awful. You know, the ones that used to suggest that the next time, you should hold the camera steady and try pointing it away from you.

We don’t have the moment of pleasurable suspense waiting for the needle to drop onto the record. On the other hand, we don’t have the frustration of discovering that your favourite music now crackles and pops, despite the fact that you only ever handled the LP by the edges while wearing white gloves and had squirted its surface with all kinds of recommended cleaning products.

We no longer experience the satisfying ping when a typewriter reaches the end of another line – although we also never have to clear up after we accidentally hit the carriage release button and send our coffee flying across the room.

We don’t often have the sense of the whole nation tuning in to the same TV programme. On the other hand, we no longer follow a TV serial for weeks and then miss the ending when the phone rings.

We don’t have the thrill of turning out the lights for a home movie show. But then, we don’t see our family memories suddenly jam in the projector and melt into a blob of burned celluloid in front of us.

The technology of yesteryear was fun then, and it’s good to get it out of the loft and try it once in a while – but I don’t think I’d swap it for today’s.

However, I reserve the right to change my mind the next time my computer grinds to a halt and tells me it’s going to dump everything I’ve been doing for the last hour.