- cross-posted to:
- technology
- cross-posted to:
- technology
Seventy-seven percent of middle-age Americans (35-54 years old) say they want to return to a time before society was “plugged in,” meaning a time before there was widespread internet and cell phone usage. As told by a new Harris Poll (via Fast Company), 63% of younger folks (18-34 years old) were also keen on returning to a pre-plugged-in world, despite that being a world they largely never had a chance to occupy.
How much did a computer cost back then? How much were the first graphics cards? How compatible were computers with each other? How much did one album cost on CD? How easy was it to obtain information on a problem? How easy was it to price compare things between stores?
The issue is social media and allowing everyone to voice their immediate thoughts on things in pseudo anonymity. It’s also the tendency of people to look at people’s fake persona and then compare themselves to it. I could rent a Lambo for the weekend and use a filter like I’m actually fit and still have hair and make all my former classmates insecure because they never see me in person. That’s the shit everyone wants to go away, they don’t want to give up Spotify.
People forget, or just weren’t around, when only the rich had a mobile phone the size of waffle iron and it just made expensive calls. Even early cells had exorbitant rates for long distance conversations between states, so we had to wait until night when it was more affordable to talk. If I wanted to watch a specific movie, I needed a credit card with a $500 hold to rent a VHS player for 24 hours, and hope that Teenage Mutant Turtles wasn’t on a wait list. Ask Jeeves was better than encyclopedia brittanica, but digging deep required a trip to the public library. And scanning, copying, or printing anything meant driving to Kinkos with your checkbook ready. Anyone else remember pulling up MapQuest and writing down the directions before going someplace new?
Reminiscers can unplug, but I’m keeping my on-demand movies, cheap phone rates, endless knowledge, GPS, and streaming music.
In 1991 I lived in a small town. You had to sign up at the library for computer time. Once or twice a month I had the opportunity to walk to the library and play Oregon trail on an apple IIe with a green monochrome monitor. We were also fortunate enough to have a lab at school with the same apple IIe computers and got to use them every once in awhile. There wasn’t any Internet for us to use, I don’t recall anybody mentioning BBS or fido net or anything like that.
The most advanced computer I think I saw was in the school library. It had a cartridge based CD rom drive. I remember how awesome that was when I saw it.
It wasn’t until around 95’ that the internet really took off and we were actually able to use it. It was also around that time that we even got our first family computer and dial up service.
Before that we had an NES, SNES, and og Grey Gameboy. We also borrowed a commodore 64 for a time.
Before that we were typing essays on the electric typewriter we had.
I know everyone thinks all this retro tech is so cool. The thing is, as a kid, I had no idea this stuff even existed other than basic VHS players and Nintendo because things like PCs and laserdisc players were insanely expensive.
I’m sure there’s stuff today that I’m blissfully unaware of because it’s so far out of my price range that I have no business knowing about it anyway.
In the '80s & '90s you could get anything from a <$100 home computer (with enormous libraries of software), to <$1000 PCs, to tens of thousands for great workstations like NeXT, SUN, and SGI (I used SGI, had a SparcStation late '90s-'00s, lusted for a NeXT but then Apple bought them and we use NeXTstep every day now). You shopped by buying a Computer Shopper - Jason’s scanning in later issues too, look around the collection. Those computers were amazing. You turned on an Atari or other home computer, it beeped and said “READY” and you could program. Not many hours of screwing around with IDEs later, instantly.
Albums on tape were cheap, you could just copy one off for <$1. CD cost the same as now, $5-20, which is artificial pricing bullshit by studios. By mid-90s you could leech or burn a CDROM of MP3s from Napster or at a LAN party. Because you see, we had friends. Uh, those were people you saw with shared interests? Spotify is shit, you should own your own (legal or not) copies of music and then when the service goes down, you don’t lose everything.
undefined> The issue is social media and allowing everyone to voice their immediate thoughts on things in pseudo anonymity. It’s also the tendency of people to look at people’s fake persona and then compare themselves to it. I could rent a Lambo for the weekend and use a filter like I’m actually fit and still have hair and make all my former classmates insecure because they never see me in person. That’s the shit everyone wants to go away, they don’t want to give up Spotify.
I understood that dynamic was toxic when Facebutt was in its infancy and noped out of that world before making an account.
And I’m glad to give up Spotify or rather, not use it in the first place. I pay artists for their music on their website, or as close to it as I can, or pirate it if they are dead or complete dicks.