01-24-2022, 05:21 PM
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
--------------------
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
![[Image: 14sigsepia.jpg]](https://i.ibb.co/9yxWwxj/14sigsepia.jpg)
Location: The lost world, Elsewhen