Change in computers as a hobbiest... 2856

Alex

You're certainly not alone with these views. Personal computers have become mainstrean. The technical limitations (and, on the other hand, the potential of being able to discover new things and open up new horizons) that once made "home computing" an interesting and intriguing hobby just aren't there any longer.

The whole 80s was filled with a steady stream of new computing-related, bleeding-edge stuff you could tinker with (various kinds of disk drives, hard drives, memory expansions, plotters, 3d vector graphics, computer graphics in general, computer music and digitized sound, experimental video digitizers, color printing, interfacing a better keyboard or a temperature sensor or a wind meter or an electric typerwriter to your computer, modems, mice, the first GUIs, desktop publishing, mulbreastasking, demoscene, etc. etc.), but these days everything has matured and it is all taken for granted. There are little new, experimental things left to do for a tinkerer. At the same time, hardware has diversified to the point that you can't really know your computer inside out at the register level the way you could in the 80s.

Having computers as a hobby just doesn't work the same way it did in earlier times - unless you're into retrocomputing. You can tinker with other things - such as open source projects - but even if it's interesting in its own right, it's still not quite the same.

* * *

As for the rest of the local BBS, I couldn't agree with you more - the concept of local discussion boards should be revitalized. The sooner, the better. (Those who have never experienced a well-administered local BBS with a thriving community of local users of course can't understand at all how refreshingly different and more friendly the general atmosphere of that kind of environment was when compared to the Usenet or the current breed of random web forums.)

When Internet opened up to the common people and commercial interests, there were lots of those who were of the opinion that the all-encompbutting "global village" would, in all respects, surpbutt whatever the local BBS had to offer. They were wrong. Being able to communicate with people from all around the world is great but it isn't a subsbreastute for local communities - and that's exactly what the old dial-up bulletin board systems were; local communities.

There has been lots of discussion about this in various places:

-- znark