I see your nostalgia and raise you this:
I see your nostalgia and raise you this: this
I actually had to learn to use a slide rule in high school, in the late 1970s.
thhhick
Computer class in high school back then for me was treating them as glorified typewriters. I fooled around with some VBScript as that’s all we had available (I was very fortunate my grade school teacher taught us LOGO) and I managed to script kiddy my way into admin access for the internet filter for my friends so we could play stuff on Newgrounds. My career advisor told me to get a science degree because there was no future in computers, haha.
Computer lab day!
I remember essentially turning a BASIC prompt into a spinning, geometric rave decoration back in 5th grade, and thinking it was the coolest shit ever, but really… it was all about Math Blaster and The Oregon Trail in the years up to that point, and for several years later.
And yes, I’d go back in a heartbeat.
Yes and no.
Computers and computer systems weren’t so much enshittified back in those days.
But the bulk CRT screens, I don’t miss those…
By the way, at those times almost every screen had one of those stupid placebo ‘glare filters’ . I don’t miss those either.
Oddly, I want the CRT’s, but those optiplexes are horrible.
I just want one crt per system for retro gaming.
Computers were still exciting. And hadn’t been enshitified.
Don’t they still use computers in schools?
What? Computers are all in schools, and libraries are still a thing too. This is about the old times.
I don’t understand the picture not being a shared experience.
I learnt to type on a piece of paper that had a picture of a keyboard on it.
You must be young and never experienced floppy drives.
If I was I wouldn’t be asking if kids don’t go through this now.
Simpler times? Hell no they don’t.
Throwback to hand writing assignments then everyone is lined up to the only computer in the school to type it out.
In sixth grade we could rent the laptop brick for the weekend; it’s where I played Police Quest 1.
In the early 90s I went to computer camp at Aldersgate in Rhode Island and we had a whole room in the retreat center for the TRS-80 Model 4’s.
In university in 2000, nothing beat the networked computers with the cables running the ceiling in the metal trays.
Windows 95 in high school was peak though.
Yes, computers were fun and exciting. Now they just suck.
Unless Linux. But even then it takes an effort to disable all the bloat and spyware bs in the bios.
what do you mean by bloat and spyware on linux? (asking because it’s the first time i hear this take)
In the bios: it’s the booting software that’s separate from the OS. Most newer computers have ridiculously long menu’s and you have to be careful what you disable because of bit locker nonsense and whatnot.
Yeah but not because of the computers.
I used to love lifting my feet, putting one hand on the monitor screen, turning it off, and shocking the hell out of whoever was sitting beside me.
The tech has evolved a lot. Especially in the FOSS area! And I am thankful for the progress. But along the way, the average culture is what I miss the most. Do I miss the very convoluted, fragile, non-standardized, and hard to configure hardware? Heehee naw.
This image is nostalgic because it recalls when personal computers were conceptually personal, even when they were public. New tech was fun and exciting.
Some of my fondest memories were easy LAN parties and collabing on XP-era machines in my 3D Studio MAX class. Also, computers didn’t feel near-useless without an Internet connection.
It’s been said before but bears repeating: “The Internet was a place.” It didn’t follow you everywhere, spy on you, sell you out. You weren’t supposed to divulge your whole life to strangers, but somehow you still made new friends.
People logged in to hang out. Heck, know what I miss most? People seemed to have TIME to log in and hang out. Even busy people. These days I feel hurried to smash out a text message while in motion.
People made personal, expressive, whimsical websites for fun, and not just as a hopeful web-dev portfolio. The Internet was only about making money for tie-wearing squares; everyone else just did things for the fun of it.
I think that’s what we miss. People were learning and using these miraculous machines that were capable of anything.
Now the machines are consumption-first appliances primarily aimed to drain your wallet and personal information, and the people have gotten so dumb. Computer literacy dropped with all the rest of kinds of literacy, and I long to find a way to push against that tide…
I miss youth and the sort of reckless abandon and constant sense of wonder. The easy friendships and stuff. The discovery of learning tech. The tech was cool and new and dramatic but our tech is def cooler now.
Things are pretty cool now too if you look for it. Sure there are problems but there have always been problems. I look for things to trigger my sense of wonder and it still feels amazing. Just harder to find cus I’m more experienced and well traveled or whatever.
I dunno I was a goofball kid working at tech then and I’m a goofball kid in a old body oggling tech now too :D
Ah, the good old automatic information processing class lol.
I miss most of all when the internet was the domain of nerds only. Us nerds are nicer than other people on average.
I don’t miss the misogyny. It’s still around but not as acceptable generally, and easier to find other women now.
I used to think so too. Turns out a lot of nerds were just one culture-war grievance away from going full Nazi.
Yeah :(
The Internet was for anybody. I think it was a mistake to foist it on everybody.
Or when “bad”, a hell of a lot more entertaining, like Archimedes Plutonium for example.
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