On 1/24/2010 9:51 PM, Keith M wrote:
We were different, and we were better. And we had
personality.
You can find personality in almost any computer subculture if you look
hard enough. I've been involved with the "demoscene" since 1990 and no
matter what platform a demo is written on, there's a lot of personality.
I'd argue that IBM machinery definitely had a personality -- reliable,
solid, strong, definitive. Artistic or creative? No. But intriguing
all the same.
So I recently decommissioned the PII 333mhz Dell I
bought in 1998. It
was powered on for about 11 years in a row -- had uptimes of 1.5years in
some cases. Zero hardware failure. It was worth the $3k I paid for it in
1998.
But do I care about it? No. It seems hardly different from the P4 that
replaced it. Or the quad core that replaced that. Have there been
technological advances? Definitely. But there's just no soul.
This changes when you build your own. My current machine was built from
hand-picked parts meant for a specific purpose (chewing through high-def
video). I spec'd every part not only for that purpose but also in
regards to each other; the end result is something that has my
personality infused in it (and as a side effect, it is rock solid
reliable). I call it "The Combine" and it lives up to its name.
This has NOT happened w/ the Amiga because I'm
left with the feeling of,
"oh, these guys were smart." They couldn't do xyz with raw cpu power,
but instead used the graphics chip to encode/decode MFM. Or whatever.
There's a feeling of ingenuity and cleverness that is either
a> not there today
b> hidden between so many layers of abstraction that it's nearly
impossible to put your finger on it.
Cleverness is definitely alive and well but you might not be looking in
the right place. Cleverness, for me, was "making do with what you have"
and performing the seemingly impossible (see prior note about the
demoscene). Today, sometimes that is taking what a modern graphics card
can do and figuring out what it is capable of. Here's an example to
blow you away (download link provided too):
http://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=52938 It's an executable that
produces a realistic mountain range with motion blur and music -- and
the executable is 4K. Seriously, a windows .exe that is 4K that
produces what I just described. Listing all of the tricks that made it
possible would take hundreds of lines, by several clever people.
So it is there, if you know where to look.
What is it about PCs today that separates them from
ones five years ago,
or 10 years ago? Clock speed? Memory? Windows 3.1 -> Vista? More colors?
Better sound?
Cores, actually. And that is also an interesting problem to solve (how
can you break your problem up into sections that multithread well?)
Are there groups of young people today that find
themselves emotionally
attached to the computers of today?
Yes:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demoscene
--
Jim Leonard (trixter at
oldskool.org)
http://www.oldskool.org/
Help our electronic games project:
http://www.mobygames.com/
Or check out some trippy MindCandy at
http://www.mindcandydvd.com/
A child borne of the home computer wars:
http://trixter.wordpress.com/