Remember the long, arduous process you had to go through to burn your favorite songs onto a blank CD?
Well, 17-year-old Alyssa Lucas doesn't because she's too young to remember those days. Curious about the practice, the Baltimore teen made a splash when she took to Twitter to ask just how someone would go about burning a CD.
Maybe its just the generation z in me but how did people burn CDs? Like how did you just get a blank CD and put songs on it? pic.twitter.com/EVUVaDX645
— alyssa (@tamaranians) October 21, 2018
And just like that, millennials of all stripes felt old AF.
Is this what getting old feels like?!? https://t.co/l7KiQGXr0W
— Breanna Danielle (@ItsBreDanielle) October 21, 2018
I'm nine million years old https://t.co/9nkjhyDcFQ
— Whit Follows (@whitneyarner) October 22, 2018
Suddenly 26, feels old. pic.twitter.com/zrRCayolHG
— Javonne. (@SheeSpeaks_) October 21, 2018
After registering for their AARP cards, some Twitter users tried to help the teen. One particular explanation was golden:
CDs are made of a substrate that is etched by a laser. Burn a spot and you produce a pit, which represents the digital value 0; skip a spot and you get what is called a land, representing the value 1. Music recorded on a CD is done at a resolution of 44,100 bits per second.
— Grady Booch (@Grady_Booch) October 22, 2018
Playing a CD also uses a laser – albeit not as power a one. Shining on the CD as it rotates, you shine a laser on the CD and depending on how it reflects (or not), a sensor detects the 0s and 1s.
— Grady Booch (@Grady_Booch) October 22, 2018
Because reading is never perfect – dust, vibration, and scratches will corrupt the disk – CDs use what is called a Cross Interleaved Reed Solomon Code, which is an error correcting encoding.
— Grady Booch (@Grady_Booch) October 22, 2018
Here is more on the encoding (which BTW is easily implemented as a state machine in hardware): https://t.co/xG4JhRJEiY
— Grady Booch (@Grady_Booch) October 22, 2018
After learning the science behind the outdated technology, Lucas said she wasn't sure a simple question would turn into a generational war.
"I was totally surprised by how much attention this had gotten, but I’m not mad at it. I honestly thought no one was really going to pay me any mind," Lucas told BuzzFeed News.
Still, she isn't convinced. "I still prefer modern ways of saving music. It's much easier to just go on Spotify and save whatever I want."
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