Videoclip

The love is gone... press enter

The recent MSN newsblip about "Top Ten Internet Fads" led me to the plex.us 24 hour bit department website. This is an interesting little place on the web; it contains little snippets from ad campaigns, news, rumors, and photos for the Mac community. The site also maintains some pretty coolio little film clips depicting computer ads from the early 1980s. I hate to sound all old and crotchety, but it's amazing how dated some of this stuff makes me feel, and I lived through it! It's hard to communicate how much fun computing was in those days, especially to a generation maturing in a society where computers have always existed, technology has always been affordable and accessible. It wasn't always that way. Kids still had slide rules when I was a child (not that I ever learned to use one, not until I was an adult.. but that's a blog entry for another day). Back in the late 80s, your could still find software for Macs, Commodores, Amigas, and even rarer stuff in (non-chain, family owned) computer shops. There was a place in Northern Virginia (dang, I forgot its name, but it was at 7 corners mall) that was like Nirvana to me-- every Electronic Arts, Origins systems, SSI and Mindscape game you could name for the Commodore 64 (my first PC!) was on a big shiny rack at the end of the store. And you had to save up for them, too.. they weren't cheap by 80s standards. 59.95 for C-64 EMPIRE, if you can believe that.

Don't get me wrong... I love what we can do now and I love being able to pay for it easily. But the sense of fun has gone. I used to delight in BUILDING pc clones with parts I skeeved from junked boxes or bought at ham radio festivals. Nowadays, it's just not worth it when you can buy a replacement for less money. Sigh.. there was a time when we were demigods...

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