Thought some of the computer-oriented people might enjoy this essay.

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A LOST WANDERING IN A DIGITAL BEWILDERNESS

The first computer I ever saw was brought to our house by a family friend.  I can't recall the model, but it probably predated the earliest Apples.  Our friend attached the computer to our TV and demonstrated some of its capabilities.  Predictably, my father was not pleased and later told us he was incensed that someone would dare to enter our house as a guest and attach a strange device to the TV!  I was fascinated by the computer, but it would be something like six years before I saw another one.

Later, I shared an apartment with others in (location).  One of the other guys in the apartment had an Apple II, and he was kind enough to allow us to use it as well.  I learned BASIC on this machine and became acquainted with Pascal.  Still later, in Germany, I purchased an Apple IIe in favor of the first IBM PC for what seemed like a ridiculously expensive price (I think it was $1200 at the time).  The PCs were even more expensive; not because they were better machines, but because they carried the IBM logo.

Over the next few years, I kept up with BASIC and learned 6502 assembler as well since the best software products all seemed to be written in assembly language.  It was a fine intellectual voyage that sharpened the clarity of my thoughts and which forced me to understand processes in detail from start to finish, something I had only very rarely done prior to learning how to program.

(nb: The above was a consequence of the American education system's abandonment of teaching students critical thought.)

By the time I returned to (location), Apple had moved onto the Mac as its flagship product and I had moved to an 80286-based PC.  Besides my classes requiring regular access to a PC, Apple's change in machine architecture to a closed box dismayed me.  I had enjoyed hobby activities like stuffing a Zilog Z86 processor card into the old IIe and giving it a dual personality, and the closed architecture of the Mac forbade such exotic pleasures.   Along the way, I picked up the rudiments of C and went down some little-trod programming paths like coding programs that had objects from several languages all linked together into an executable that had to mind its P's and Q's on how to pop bytes off the stack since the various languages had differing conventions.

This was also the end of the experience of the computer as a stand-alone device.  Bulletin boards and modems were common and the technocrati moved online.  "Online" back then was a different world than the internet today.  For one thing, there seemed to be far fewer provocative asshats online and when people wanted to argue about something, they often knew a lot about their chosen topics.  I lost interest in most programming.  The "constant change" aspect of it turned me off as it seemed new languages were being announced monthly.  Time invested in learning a language rapidly lost its utility as anyone looking for programming skills at work always wanted to craft products in the latest language.  C++, C#, Java, HTML . . . all made sense in terms of their approach to given problems, but for someone trying to keep up in their spare time, it was overwhelming.

With the advent of the web, the PC took another long stride toward becoming a mere appliance.  Turn on, browse, be distracted.  Code?  That's something others do now.  Along the way to this low point in my relationship with computers, work and hobby activities led me to become more interested in working with data than crafting code.  Since so much information is available on the internet today, these data processing and analysis skills have proved useful.  But even more importantly for someone who is ageing and finding it increasingly difficult to learn new tricks, the basics of working with data do not change.  Some tools get updated, but thought processes and functional approaches remain more or less the same.

I also noted the inevitable capture of the internet by monied interests.  So many of the online outrages today are driven by this development; notably the absolute contempt that firms like Google and Facebook show for concepts like user privacy.  The internet is basically just another avenue for shoving advertising and various propaganda into our faces.  It all makes me wonder if my relationship with the PC will endure into my final decades.  I don't like the idea of being tracked for any purpose, and it is beginning to look like the only way to escape it is to pull the jack on the internet once and for all.  A daily existence less rich in information?  Probably.  But then, there's something to be said for re-learning how to sit on a terrace in the evening and listening to the musical genius of a bird's song.

Cheers

I feel ya, especially in regard to the plethora of programming languages. I learned BASIC, and DOS because I needed it to bend the machines back then to my will, but never had a need for COBOL, and when Pascal came out, I lost all interest in programming, because I could see that programming languages were evolving into their flavor-or-the-month phase of life.

I did learn FORTRAN, the Latin of dead computer languages, because it contained built in advanced trig functions, like inverse tangent, and I needed those for some astronomical programming I was doing on a VAX at the university. It was already a dead language when I learned it, and about the only people that used it any more were physicists and astronomers. Now, it's true that you can program BASIC to do advanced trig using subroutines, but I'm lazy, and did not want to type all that extra code when all I had to type in FORTRAN was ATAN to retrieve an angle from a tangent.

Later, I got into hacking for a while, and a close brush with the law in connection to that hobby sparked an intense interest in encryption. They can't gig you on what they can't prove, y'know? Then there is also the fact that encryption can keep your private information (like banking stuff) secure from hackers if properly used, so there is that to consider above and beyond mere legal concerns. I never hacked for profit, only for fun, but the government tends to take a dim view of all of it - they get jittery, it seems, when someone retrieves software from their computers to back engineer it and see what makes it tick.

Anyhow, porn seems to have sparked the financial revolution on the internet - at one time, I believe 2/3 of all internet sites were porn sites, and when Wall Street saw how well that was going for porn purveyors, they decided to get in on the money making rackets as well, and sell everything from widgets to wombats across the wire for easy cash. The internet has never been the same.

Then came along Google et al to make selling stuff easier for Wall Street by stealing everyone's personal data and profiling them using said stolen data, and it was the beginning of the end. They found ingenious ways to get around encryption for the profiling - in order to avoid the data collection, one would have to disconnect entirely. If the information was flowing - and what good is a web connection if it isn't? - then Google and Company were intercepting it, analyzing it, and profiling with it... all in an effort to assist Wall Street in discovering just which sort of can opener you will buy.

Then Google and Friends discovered another customer that they could benefit from by selling their profiling data - gummint. Then they got even cozier, doing the dirty work gummint wasn't allowed to do, like censoring free speech, and a diabolical partnership was formed. Big Tech and Big Gummint, both standing naked  in the same shower washing each other's backs.

It's all down hill from there.

.

@"Ninurta" 

Just checked on Zilog.

Still in business!  Since 1974.  In today's market, that is -amazing- .

Cheers

(01-25-2022, 09:34 AM)F2d5thCav Wrote: @"Ninurta" 

Just checked on Zilog.

Still in business!  Since 1974.  In today's market, that is -amazing- .

Cheers

It looks like they moved into the low end but high volume controller market, and that's what kept them afloat. Instead of chasing the 64 bit architecture, they stayed mainly at 8 and 16 bit, with an aborted foray into 32 bit architecture for a while, sufficient to run a number of controllers for communications and security applications, and those are EVERYWHERE these days. Some of them can be found on ARM "computer on a single board" architectures that a lot of Linux nerds like to tinker with. When I studied physics in the 90's, I had to have a TI graphing calculator with all manner of fancy and advanced functions, and that had a Z-80 in it.

It wouldn't surprise me if I found out these motion detection and IR surveillance cameras I have had a Zilog chip in them.

I didn't realize that Oracle has a free download of Sparc workstation for X86 processor-based computers (i.e. PCs).

That could be useful to have on an old laptop or other computer.

Cheers

Ah yes, the old barnstorming days of early home computing. I followed a similar path. I did very well with Basic Language when DOS was all there was. I started to progress in to Assembly Language when I came to realize that I'd never catch up to the software appearing on the market.

When I finally got online in the late 90s I did a lot of research and eventually became good with HTML and SEO, but that was getting beyond catching up with, and then came the phone apps (that I didn't deal with).

Lately I've been working with my own private network. I started in on that with Windows XP up to Windows 10. I've integrated all my computers and devices including a CCTV security system, It includes ethernet connections, WiFi and Bluetooth networks. I can share a connection to the internet, even monitor it from my phone, but I keep it off line.

The computer central to my network (the node if you will) is powered on 12 volts DC as well as AC. I've played with it's voice recognition and intend to give it a voice as well. An AI or mesh-net project would be areas I'd be inclined to explore next.

@"Michigan Swamp Buck" 

You're much more ambitious than I.  I'll be happy to set up a multiple-OS boot system some day.

All the local area network stuff is a universe unto itself.  I remember the early LANs with thick cables and transceivers that physically penetrated the cable to make contact ("vampire tap").  Every once in a while, the tap would have to be adjusted so the contact remained solid.

Cheers

(02-12-2022, 06:56 PM)F2d5thCav Wrote: @"Michigan Swamp Buck" 

You're much more ambitious than I.  I'll be happy to set up a multiple-OS boot system some day.

All the local area network stuff is a universe unto itself.  I remember the early LANs with thick cables and transceivers that physically penetrated the cable to make contact ("vampire tap").  Every once in a while, the tap would have to be adjusted so the contact remained solid.

Cheers

It sounds like you were more involved and did more with it than I did. I had just started using machine language subroutines to speed up the basic programs I made. I had aspired to create a D&D style game and got to the point of creating random rooms with monsters to chase your character around as well as background music. But at the time there were games out that were already well beyond what I was doing, so I started to learn to use software instead. Got into Photoshop, Illustrator, In-Design and ended up doing graphic design for print and online.

As for my current project ideas . . .

The idea of a mesh-net is to create a grassroots public network, an alternative local internet of people's computers and devices more or less. If they decide to flip the off switch on communications, you could still have webpages, trade files, participate in network gaming, watch movies, play music, and communicate with others on the network.

The AI thing? Why not have a customized computer with a personal interface that's on your side?