2 ms·

This could be written about a lot of things and it's still not true. Radios were more fun when people had to buy their own transistors and solder it all togethe

This could be written about a lot of things and it's still not true. Radios were more fun when people had to buy their own transistors and solder it all together themselves. Cars were more fun when the engine was simple enough to take apart and rebuild with a wrench set and a couple screwdrivers. Oh, wait, you can still do these things. Not with every car or radio out there, but it's still accessible and not even crazy expensive to get into. Computers are still fun even if you're not building it from a kit and can't study the connections across 4500 or so transistors to almost completely understand your microprocessor. And if those are the things that make it fun for, you can still do it. No one is stopping you. Enjoy yourself, stop wishing for a thing that hasn't actually disappeared to come back.

subjectsigma 2y ago
It has actually disappeared. The culture the author grew up with is dead and it’s not coming back. He says in the article that he felt both like he was on the forefront of technology and that he had control over it. Now being on the forefront of technology means staring right into existential horrors like AI, global warming, predatory consumerism, and the death of privacy. You can’t just go back to pretending 8-bit computers are new and the future is bright. The author wrote a short piece that was 90% about his feelings; incredible to me how many people in the thread simply ignored that and went right to criticizing technical inaccuracy
chriswarbo 2y ago
Indeed, it's a similar lament to how e.g. nobody makes X like in the good old days of Y (for arbitrary X and Y). Except they do, and there's probably way more of X being made, in more nuance of variation, style and fractal sub-categorisation than ever before. What has changed are that people and culture moved on: the people who made X back then are now into some new Z bullshit; the local W, that used to be all about X, is long gone; and V, which was how we followed all the latest X, doesn't even X these days. We can have nostalgia for those things, but we can also find equivalents if we put in some effort: some that stick with the traditional, others that are pushing things in new directions, choose your poison. The Internet has made it easier to find things outside of the mainstream; and may actually be less effort to follow than when it was mainstream (e.g. YouTube channels vs a weekly TV broadcast; blogs vs magazines; discussion forums vs quarterly meetups; etc.). Maybe without a mainstream "direction", the future of X isn't clear; but it also means we can choose which way we want to push that envelope. One thing that does get lost is actually "being mainstream"; e.g. events being huge sell-out affairs; being a topic for casual conversation; etc. Things that require other people to give a shit. Yet that's a two-way street: after all, we don't want those Z idiots trying to push their crap on us!

subjectsigma 2y ago

It has actually disappeared. The culture the author grew up with is dead and it’s not coming back. He says in the article that he felt both like he was on the forefront of technology and that he had control over it. Now being on the forefront of technology means staring right into existential horrors like AI, global warming, predatory consumerism, and the death of privacy. You can’t just go back to pretending 8-bit computers are new and the future is bright. The author wrote a short piece that was 90% about his feelings; incredible to me how many people in the thread simply ignored that and went right to criticizing technical inaccuracy

chriswarbo 2y ago

Indeed, it's a similar lament to how e.g. nobody makes X like in the good old days of Y (for arbitrary X and Y). Except they do, and there's probably way more of X being made, in more nuance of variation, style and fractal sub-categorisation than ever before. What has changed are that people and culture moved on: the people who made X back then are now into some new Z bullshit; the local W, that used to be all about X, is long gone; and V, which was how we followed all the latest X, doesn't even X these days. We can have nostalgia for those things, but we can also find equivalents if we put in some effort: some that stick with the traditional, others that are pushing things in new directions, choose your poison. The Internet has made it easier to find things outside of the mainstream; and may actually be less effort to follow than when it was mainstream (e.g. YouTube channels vs a weekly TV broadcast; blogs vs magazines; discussion forums vs quarterly meetups; etc.). Maybe without a mainstream "direction", the future of X isn't clear; but it also means we can choose which way we want to push that envelope. One thing that does get lost is actually "being mainstream"; e.g. events being huge sell-out affairs; being a topic for casual conversation; etc. Things that require other people to give a shit. Yet that's a two-way street: after all, we don't want those Z idiots trying to push their crap on us!