Debug Tag in Green on Parking Meter

Pictures Taken on 20 September 2009 

The choice of location for this tag is interesting. Its small size will mean that it will receive fewer views.  But for the person using the meter the tag will be impossible to ignore.  I have seen the "Debug" tag in other places.  In other instances it is clear that the icon below the text is a representation of an audio cassette.  The original medium for recorded audio was cylinders covered with wax in which the audio was recorded in analog mechanically.  Later this technology was replaced with similar technology replaced with mechanically recorded analog on discs.  The most popular medium of which was analog.  This technology was limited in the duration of playback possible.  This technology was replaced, especially for use in audio broadcasting by a technology developed by the Germans which used magnets to record analog audio on a special kind of tape.  These tapes were available in several forms including reel to reel, eight track and finally the cassette.   

The cassette was a consumer version of the magnetic tape technology.  Consumer technology allowed for both playing and recording on such tapes.  These tapes were even used to store digital information from computers such as the Apple II, Commodore Vic-20, and TI 99-4a.  The use of such tapes continued well past the initial popularity of digital recordings on compact discs.  Consumer recording of compact discs lagged playback for several years.   Further early compact disc players had little if any buffering, so were not superior to the cassette for such activities as jogging.  The cassette technology slowly faded in popularity with the development of better cd players.  The advent of solid state digital players brought about the end of wide spread use of audio cassettes.

The audio cassette conveys the idea of "old school" technology both audio and computer.  Since cassettes where quickly replaced by the the disk drive as the preferred data storage technology for personal computers, the cassette is associated with a very specific time frame in personal computer culture.    Therefore one would presume that the taggers is older, at least in his thrities at the time of this picture, or very interested in arcane obsolete technology.