5 ms·

I enjoyed the AMIGA and it took me decades to fully appreciate what a great machine it was back then. But I force myself not to get one. It's just stuff. Like a

I enjoyed the AMIGA and it took me decades to fully appreciate what a great machine it was back then. But I force myself not to get one. It's just stuff. Like a Vinyl Music Player. Yes, it's cool on some level, but I sense I may merely want it as a cheap source of dopamine because of .. nostalgia. Nostalgia is a romantic emotion but I am professionally in the business of creating the future, so unless there's something valuable to be learned from the past, it's not where I want to focus my attention on. (by the way: For the occasional nostalgia fix there are really good and well functioning emulators such as FS-UAE that even simulate the sound of the floppy drive.)

ziaddotcom 6y ago
Vinyl sales surpassed CDs in 2020. I suspect many of those sales were albums released in 2020 by artists born after 2000. Very little nostalgia would be motivating those purchases. If inventing the future, one must be able to discern what is a classic or canonical element of the past that is presently underutilized. One could make the argument that Elon Musk is nostalgia obsessed with what has been resuscitated from NASA technology that had been mothballed. Perhaps Descartes was absurdly nostalgic for the times of Euclid, and Einstein absurdly nostalgic for the times of Descartes. Will we lapse into the dark ages if all the Amiga 500s stop working, probably not. If we lost the knowledge of how to tech how the ARM architecture works, as was the case prior to the raspberry pi but after the death of the Acorn line of RISC PCs, we would have lost quite a bit of important knowledge.
- soneca 6y ago
  I think there is a type of nostalgia that doesn’t require having lived it before. I enjoy the feeling of going to 50s themed restaurants, despite not having lived in the 50s and not even raised in the US. Just movies influencing my taste.
  - ziaddotcom 6y ago
    I like hamburgers and wasn't raised in Germany but I wouldn't go around Berlin saying I have a certain kind of nostalgia for the 1940s despite not having lived it.
- Chris2048 6y ago
  > Elon Musk is nostalgia obsessed with what has been resuscitated from NASA technology being nostalgic about the tech vs the vision is different.
  - ziaddotcom 6y ago
    Exactly, and I think if SpaceX were to review designs of the Saturn 5 it should be obviously not because they are nostalgic, but because they're trying to make the best rocket for the future they can.
    - Chris2048 6y ago
      Plus vinyl was "obsoleted" by later tech, which is different from being mothballed but otherwise un-surpassed.
- qayxc 6y ago
  > If we lost the knowledge of how to tech how the ARM architecture works, as was the case prior to the raspberry pi but after the death of the Acorn line of RISC PCs, we would have lost quite a bit of important knowledge. In which universe did that ever happen? ARM was alive and kicking to the point that even Intel had its own ARM designs. Heck, I worked with ARM-powered devices 20 years ago and those were far from being "lost knowledge". Just because something isn't being hyped to edge of the solar system at a given point in time, doesn't mean it's dead or forgotten...
  - ziaddotcom 6y ago
    The Acorn Archimedes came out in 1987. Is 20ish years vs 30ish years a relevant distinction when the far newer raspberry pi serves to reify the educational goals and funding that the Archimedes was underwritten to do. Unless you are saying the pipeline for educating tomorrows computer engineers should start with M1 macs instead of raspberry pi, it seems we are in violent agreement. There is a typo where I wrote "to tech" instead of "to teach," perhaps that added confusion.
    - Nursie 6y ago
      Raspberry Pi had a great image and great marketing. But it wasn't the only hobby device available at the time, and ARM was massively used in industry. I think talking about loss of knowledge there is a little weird. (I also found a lot of the rhetoric around the RasPi at its launch quite weird, and very dismissive of all the other work that had taken place before it)
      - ziaddotcom 6y ago
        Any examples of any of those hobbiest devices at the time that had scale of educational impact that raspberry pi has had at $5-$35 a pop? Arduino is not a single board computer. It largely needs something like a pi or better just to program it.
        Nursie 6y ago
- walrus01 6y ago
  > Vinyl sales surpassed CDs in 2020. cassette tape sales apparently doubled in 2020: https://www.nme.com/news/music/cassette-sales-have-more-than-doubled-in-2020-2711274 https://www.nme.com/news/music/cassette-sales-have-more-than...
  - ghaff 6y ago
    Leaving aside used sales (which can make sense for CDs from a pure economic perspective). I assume most people who buy CDs are those who want to own their music but don't want to deal with torrents and figure that, if they're going to buy a whole album, they might as well buy the CD and rip it. Whereas vinyl and, I guess???, cassettes appeal to nostalgia and a certain physicalness of the media. CDs probably seem rather utilitarian in contrast.
sneak 6y ago
As someone who has been playing records for decades, beat mixing (as a dj) is massively more satisfying with vinyl than with cdjs or a midi controller. It's not just nostalgia. I even bought a system (traktor) that uses special digital timecode vinyl (and a 2in 2out audio interface) to play digital files as if I had vinyl copies of them, which is a weird twist on the situation.
- ziaddotcom 6y ago
  Especially when it comes to making and performing art in a a specific genre, the devil is in the details. Serato control vinyl might have found a happy medium or even surpassed what is capable with certain aspects of cdjs or the state of late 70s through early 2000s vinyl djing, but its not cheap, and it doesn't replicate the discovery or ownership aspect of purchasing vinyl. It would quite odd to me for someone to say that serato control vinyl is a nostalgia oriented product.
- cyberdelica 6y ago
  Check out "xwax"[0], if you haven't seen it already. [0] https://xwax.org/ https://xwax.org/
indigochill 6y ago
Retrocomputing in the abstract is, I think, still very relevant for tech education, because it provides fewer layers of abstraction for a student to wrap their head around. That said, my feeling is that emulation's good enough. You don't necessarily need a physical ZX Spectrum when you can emulate one much more cheaply if learning to program on it is the goal.
- Renaud 6y ago
  Playing with an Amiga or ZX81 may be fun and in that regard you may be right that emulation is often enough if you just want to consume content and get a bit of nostalgia. However, there is something to be said about having to handle the hardware and fiddle with it, fail at it, troubleshoot it until you get enough of an intimate knowledge that you finally understand what makes everything tick. Even better, building your own 6502 or Z80 small computer is very eye opening and will give anyone not just the joy of creating something concrete but also give a solid base on which to build an understanding of how all computers actually work. Ben Eater's[1] (and many others) work is pretty important in that regard. [1]:https://eater.net/
  - stevekemp 6y ago
    I've enjoyed reading Ben's content, as I slowly work towards building a computer of my own. I managed to get an Arduino to drive a Z80, handling I/O and RAM access. The next step is the tricky one - working out how to design a board and wire everything up standalone. Still I'm in no particular rush, there are many single-board Z80 systems out there and mine will be nothing special if/when I actually get the design completed and assembled.
    - Renaud 6y ago
      Kuddos on your journey into building your modern/vintage hybrid! It doesn't need to compare to anything or be special. The only metric should be that it's fun and educational to you to build and hack this together and make it your own. If other find it useful, whether the end-product or the journey, then that should be side-effect of the joy of inventing something for yourself.

ziaddotcom 6y ago

Vinyl sales surpassed CDs in 2020. I suspect many of those sales were albums released in 2020 by artists born after 2000. Very little nostalgia would be motivating those purchases. If inventing the future, one must be able to discern what is a classic or canonical element of the past that is presently underutilized. One could make the argument that Elon Musk is nostalgia obsessed with what has been resuscitated from NASA technology that had been mothballed. Perhaps Descartes was absurdly nostalgic for the times of Euclid, and Einstein absurdly nostalgic for the times of Descartes. Will we lapse into the dark ages if all the Amiga 500s stop working, probably not. If we lost the knowledge of how to tech how the ARM architecture works, as was the case prior to the raspberry pi but after the death of the Acorn line of RISC PCs, we would have lost quite a bit of important knowledge.

soneca 6y ago
I think there is a type of nostalgia that doesn’t require having lived it before. I enjoy the feeling of going to 50s themed restaurants, despite not having lived in the 50s and not even raised in the US. Just movies influencing my taste.
- ziaddotcom 6y ago
  I like hamburgers and wasn't raised in Germany but I wouldn't go around Berlin saying I have a certain kind of nostalgia for the 1940s despite not having lived it.
Chris2048 6y ago
> Elon Musk is nostalgia obsessed with what has been resuscitated from NASA technology being nostalgic about the tech vs the vision is different.
- ziaddotcom 6y ago
  Exactly, and I think if SpaceX were to review designs of the Saturn 5 it should be obviously not because they are nostalgic, but because they're trying to make the best rocket for the future they can.
  - Chris2048 6y ago
    Plus vinyl was "obsoleted" by later tech, which is different from being mothballed but otherwise un-surpassed.
qayxc 6y ago
> If we lost the knowledge of how to tech how the ARM architecture works, as was the case prior to the raspberry pi but after the death of the Acorn line of RISC PCs, we would have lost quite a bit of important knowledge. In which universe did that ever happen? ARM was alive and kicking to the point that even Intel had its own ARM designs. Heck, I worked with ARM-powered devices 20 years ago and those were far from being "lost knowledge". Just because something isn't being hyped to edge of the solar system at a given point in time, doesn't mean it's dead or forgotten...
- ziaddotcom 6y ago
  The Acorn Archimedes came out in 1987. Is 20ish years vs 30ish years a relevant distinction when the far newer raspberry pi serves to reify the educational goals and funding that the Archimedes was underwritten to do. Unless you are saying the pipeline for educating tomorrows computer engineers should start with M1 macs instead of raspberry pi, it seems we are in violent agreement. There is a typo where I wrote "to tech" instead of "to teach," perhaps that added confusion.
  - Nursie 6y ago
    Raspberry Pi had a great image and great marketing. But it wasn't the only hobby device available at the time, and ARM was massively used in industry. I think talking about loss of knowledge there is a little weird. (I also found a lot of the rhetoric around the RasPi at its launch quite weird, and very dismissive of all the other work that had taken place before it)
    - ziaddotcom 6y ago
      Any examples of any of those hobbiest devices at the time that had scale of educational impact that raspberry pi has had at $5-$35 a pop? Arduino is not a single board computer. It largely needs something like a pi or better just to program it.
      - Nursie 6y ago
walrus01 6y ago
> Vinyl sales surpassed CDs in 2020. cassette tape sales apparently doubled in 2020: https://www.nme.com/news/music/cassette-sales-have-more-than-doubled-in-2020-2711274 https://www.nme.com/news/music/cassette-sales-have-more-than...
- ghaff 6y ago
  Leaving aside used sales (which can make sense for CDs from a pure economic perspective). I assume most people who buy CDs are those who want to own their music but don't want to deal with torrents and figure that, if they're going to buy a whole album, they might as well buy the CD and rip it. Whereas vinyl and, I guess???, cassettes appeal to nostalgia and a certain physicalness of the media. CDs probably seem rather utilitarian in contrast.

sneak 6y ago

As someone who has been playing records for decades, beat mixing (as a dj) is massively more satisfying with vinyl than with cdjs or a midi controller. It's not just nostalgia. I even bought a system (traktor) that uses special digital timecode vinyl (and a 2in 2out audio interface) to play digital files as if I had vinyl copies of them, which is a weird twist on the situation.

ziaddotcom 6y ago
Especially when it comes to making and performing art in a a specific genre, the devil is in the details. Serato control vinyl might have found a happy medium or even surpassed what is capable with certain aspects of cdjs or the state of late 70s through early 2000s vinyl djing, but its not cheap, and it doesn't replicate the discovery or ownership aspect of purchasing vinyl. It would quite odd to me for someone to say that serato control vinyl is a nostalgia oriented product.
cyberdelica 6y ago
Check out "xwax"[0], if you haven't seen it already. [0] https://xwax.org/ https://xwax.org/

indigochill 6y ago

Retrocomputing in the abstract is, I think, still very relevant for tech education, because it provides fewer layers of abstraction for a student to wrap their head around. That said, my feeling is that emulation's good enough. You don't necessarily need a physical ZX Spectrum when you can emulate one much more cheaply if learning to program on it is the goal.

Renaud 6y ago
Playing with an Amiga or ZX81 may be fun and in that regard you may be right that emulation is often enough if you just want to consume content and get a bit of nostalgia. However, there is something to be said about having to handle the hardware and fiddle with it, fail at it, troubleshoot it until you get enough of an intimate knowledge that you finally understand what makes everything tick. Even better, building your own 6502 or Z80 small computer is very eye opening and will give anyone not just the joy of creating something concrete but also give a solid base on which to build an understanding of how all computers actually work. Ben Eater's[1] (and many others) work is pretty important in that regard. [1]:https://eater.net/
- stevekemp 6y ago
  I've enjoyed reading Ben's content, as I slowly work towards building a computer of my own. I managed to get an Arduino to drive a Z80, handling I/O and RAM access. The next step is the tricky one - working out how to design a board and wire everything up standalone. Still I'm in no particular rush, there are many single-board Z80 systems out there and mine will be nothing special if/when I actually get the design completed and assembled.
  - Renaud 6y ago
    Kuddos on your journey into building your modern/vintage hybrid! It doesn't need to compare to anything or be special. The only metric should be that it's fun and educational to you to build and hack this together and make it your own. If other find it useful, whether the end-product or the journey, then that should be side-effect of the joy of inventing something for yourself.