I enjoyed how in Foundation novels they had mathematics that could predict the outcome of the future, had intergalactic travel, had personal shields, and a bunch of other fancy shit, but they were still using tapes to record information.
For those of you born after, or near the turn of the century, you don't understand how magical the year 2000 was. It was a completely different eon, and seemed so futuristic. Conan O'Brien had a whole gig about In the Year 2000. The term "2000" was used to indicate something was fancy, or ultimate, or high-tech. 2000 was the future, and therefore amazing. We did have a sense of optimism though, that is nowhere to be found nowadays.
Looks like it was recurring for a bit, I remember the hat move and trying to say “three thousand” with a frozen mouth after eating a bowl of ice cream is difficult
Tbf, we still do use tape to record information. For archival, magnetic tape is still far and away the undisputed king of high density storage. We've got single tape cartridges in the 60TB range.
They just completely suck for regular access so they're limited to archival only
Or in old sci-fi books and movies when astronauts would be furiously writing calculations for navigation. Computers took most sci-fi authors by surprise.