Comment by equalarrow
11 years ago
I was more of a Compute! / Compute!s Gazette guy.. But man, does this bring back memories..
Hayes modems. Compuserve! The 80's were so simple. Every computer back then was awesome and it was all about getting your hands on them and just trying stuff. Aka, hacking - before it was 'illegal'.
I'll never be able to impart on my kids what it was like pre-internet. (Btw, it was great!) But, like anything, you can bring these lessons forward and present them with some context that makes sense.
When I was young, this was all positive and all inspiring. I guess that was possible through the 6502. If someone could invent a time machine - what a magical time...
I understand that from a hardware point of view it's way cooler to start hacking closer to physical bytes and voltages.
The computational substrate has become more complex, yes, but the prepackaged computers did wrap an astonishing amount of complexity behind an off-the-shelf usable interface, just like nowadays. I would claim philosophically the scene has not changed for the majority - vendors prepackage computational substrate, users use it.
What has changed is that the interface and the computational substrate has become more complex.
The modern approach is then to pick an abstraction platform on which to implement one's hacking. With kids Scratch seems to be fantastic. The added abstraction layer removes some of the immediacy of the experience but the power of the computer enables a far richer spectrum of expression.
The modern computer is about intellectual exploration of all domains - visual arts, music, architecture, mathematics,... where the computer and the software is the enabler for the human expression, and not the end in itself.
I would claim it is equally as magical to grab a copy of Mathematica and start exploring physics without having to internalize endless tables of geometric identities, integral formulas, and solutions to differential equations.
Or, if one wants to learn an instrument, say guitar, just find a suitable tutor from the endless streams of youtube. Similarly for art techniques.
The modern platform enables anyone to start exploring the whole spectrum of human expression right from ones home couch rather than travel long ways to attend lessons. I would claim it is far more magical for the population in general than e.g. hacking ones TCP/IP stack.
> The 80's were so simple.
Simple things were simple, complex things were impossible, mostly because computers of that type and era didn't have the RAM.
Rose-colored glasses are nice, but they say a lot more about the wearer than the era.
Amen, I poked around on c-64 emulator one time looking for a nostalgia rush, all I got was headache; that inexorable blinking cursor. Living in the rural midwest, my 80's where an exercise in frustration due to lack of information and resources. Is there a word for good nostalgia and bad nostalgia? Remorse I guess.