4 ms·
Screen savers were such a fun thing, two decades ago. It feels like all of the fun has been crushed out of computing these days. Why so serious?
by thrower123 7y ago
Screen savers were such a fun thing, two decades ago. It feels like all of the fun has been crushed out of computing these days.
Why so serious?
- spicymaki 7y agoI am starting think it is the money that strips all of the fun out of it. Most software developers are not developing for fun these days. They are interchangeable cogs developing CRUD for soulless corporations whilst praying not to be rifed in the next culling. It is hard to produce art in that environment.
- mattl 7y agoI still run XScreenSaver everywhere. Grab a copy from the website and compile it up.
- kragen 7y agoPart of the difficulty is that technical feasibility of the software is no longer as much of a limitation. Half the things in XScreenSaver or Future Crew's Unreal https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=InrGJ7C9B3s https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=InrGJ7C9B3s were things it was really surprising to see on the screen of a computer in 1993, especially one that wasn't a $50000 SGI. But now pretty much anything you can see, you can record an HD video of, and your $100 hand computer is fast enough to play it back in real time. So there's no longer the wonder factor of "how is this even possible? Am I dreaming?". Except sometimes there is. Like with Deep Dream. Or GPT-2. Or the Looking Glass light field display. Or GauGAN. Or a lot of math things. Or topology optimization. Or Wikipedia. But I do think it's a constant danger, forgetting that this stuff is supposed to be fun.