Plain Old Jane
08-25-2005, 03:50 PM
Remember 20 years ago when 2k of Random Access Memory was MORE than enough to store all your data. Remember when flat panel monitors were a pipe dream and 200mhz towers were a far off vision which stood beside flying cars and moon colonies in folklore... or rather geeklore...
Too often in todays world, humans retain short memories, they dont remember or rather dont care about what we dreamed about a lifetime ago. Scifi movies about alien invaders with laser beam guns, cell phones that weighed eleven pounds. GPS systems that were only a decade from when city blocks were indistinguishable on spy satalites, and of course robots that could grab a can of coke when you were on a MUD with your BBS buddies. (Hey donnie, why dont we have MUDs here? Get with the times!)
An old BBS forum turned News Portal called Engadget has slapped together one of their old year in reviews for us modern day folk could appreciate the great strides we made.
Click Here for the Article (http://www.engadget.com/entry/1234000430055334/)
The review covers many rather humorous (in the modern day anyway) looks at pre-contemporary technologies.
From a review of Windows 1.0 and their rather forlorn look at the Arizona based Microsoft that built the too-close-to-zero bit GUI, they did however, revel in the fact that it could run more than one DOS program at one time.
To their covering of Apples switch of resources from the Lisa to the Macintosh, and Engadget's stark criticism of that mistake. (El Oh El)
They also cover Portable Phones (Tied to the car, no longer!), The Famicon, the Amiga 1000, the Commodore 128 (38k of ROM! WOW!), to the Petster (I had one, it never did anything except meow and roll in circles.) and of course the Wowing of a nation when the first commercially available Software CD was The Grolier Encyclopedia. (500 Megabytes! HOLY SWEET JESUS!)
It reminds us of a simpler time when all those people who could program in basic made millions, and reminds me that even tho I recall the technology of the eighties (cuz my dumb parents kept it until the nineties.) I was still marginally baffled by the stupidity of that decade, tech-wise. And if nothing more, it is giggle-worthy.
Too often in todays world, humans retain short memories, they dont remember or rather dont care about what we dreamed about a lifetime ago. Scifi movies about alien invaders with laser beam guns, cell phones that weighed eleven pounds. GPS systems that were only a decade from when city blocks were indistinguishable on spy satalites, and of course robots that could grab a can of coke when you were on a MUD with your BBS buddies. (Hey donnie, why dont we have MUDs here? Get with the times!)
An old BBS forum turned News Portal called Engadget has slapped together one of their old year in reviews for us modern day folk could appreciate the great strides we made.
Click Here for the Article (http://www.engadget.com/entry/1234000430055334/)
The review covers many rather humorous (in the modern day anyway) looks at pre-contemporary technologies.
From a review of Windows 1.0 and their rather forlorn look at the Arizona based Microsoft that built the too-close-to-zero bit GUI, they did however, revel in the fact that it could run more than one DOS program at one time.
To their covering of Apples switch of resources from the Lisa to the Macintosh, and Engadget's stark criticism of that mistake. (El Oh El)
They also cover Portable Phones (Tied to the car, no longer!), The Famicon, the Amiga 1000, the Commodore 128 (38k of ROM! WOW!), to the Petster (I had one, it never did anything except meow and roll in circles.) and of course the Wowing of a nation when the first commercially available Software CD was The Grolier Encyclopedia. (500 Megabytes! HOLY SWEET JESUS!)
It reminds us of a simpler time when all those people who could program in basic made millions, and reminds me that even tho I recall the technology of the eighties (cuz my dumb parents kept it until the nineties.) I was still marginally baffled by the stupidity of that decade, tech-wise. And if nothing more, it is giggle-worthy.