I feel a sort of affinity for this approach to making things for daily use. There is an acknowledgement of a lack of elegance in daily life. Searching for a kind of delight in using mundane things. A desire for at least a hat tip to continuity while not being a stick-in-the-mud about progress.
When I was young I had to type things on an ancient manual typwriter, and use carbon paper to save a copy for myself. I remember distinctly the first time I saw a Xerox machine. A Polaroid camera. A teletype machine. A fax. A cell phone. MS Office. I remember I was somewhat drunk at a party at my home, and some guests and I managed to get me on the Internet on dial-up on a lark. I remember loading Doom on a floppy and running it in DOS.
Sometimes it’s not possible to say whether we’ve entirely shunned modernity or we’re so far ahead of everyone else that we’re the Jetsons and most everyone else is the Flintstones. We don’t have cable TV. Our friends and family think we’re living in 1965.
You watch cable TV? And you get the newspaper printed and delivered? Send your children to school on a bus? Commute? Have heat fed by a big, rusty tub of carboniferous goo in your basement? Shop at a mall? How quaint you are.
I make things that are cutting-edge anachronisms. I like to see fellow travelers.
7 Responses
Doom! DOS! Running in!
Okay….. how about Colossal Cave…. 8 inch floppy that was floppy…. OS? Who the hell remembers? Some BDS clone.
Lo I say unto you, "Xyzzy!"
Visicalc, anyone?
Sippican needs one of these
http://steampunkworkshop.com/keyboard.shtml
Back in the day (1987) I had an Apple ][c computer. I could run it off a car battery. I added a portable black and white TV with a 5 inch screen. I was able to haul the whole thing in a beer cooler with wheels. At the time, this was some seriously cutting-edge stuff.
I really didn't use it out and about very much. I just got a kick out of being able to do it.
Goes to show you can't stay ahead of a throwback.
Sexy carriage return!
You remind me, in first memories of now commonplace technologies, of the Pastor at the Methodist Church I attended when I was growing up. Swell guy; a military chaplain. He had reached retirement age and wanted an actual small town congregation, which he had never had. So he asked the Synod for one and they were happy to oblige, as all the up and coming ministers strove for bigger churches in bigger towns.
We got him and boy did we luck out. I was not spiritual at all but for once did not mind going to Church every Sunday, because he was just fun to listen to.
Anyway. One day he had dropped by the house for one or another reason; we were outside and a plane flew over, pretty low, which was unusual. He then told me about the very first day, when he was a boy, that he saw an airplane. Year, month, day, place and time. He knew about them but had never seen one, in flight or on the ground. The one he saw was in flight.
That blew my pre-teen mind. Even out in the country where I lived, I saw them regularly.
The best I got is I remember the first Texas Instruments calculator I ever saw, the kind with the red LED display. My Grandparent's next door neighbor had one.
I loaded Frogger and Space Invaders for the young-uns yesterday, just to show them throwback. They loved them.
You're the Jetsons? We must be The Beverly Hillbillies and The Rifleman. Marcus! Get muh boots!
A steampunked Imac … how cool is that!!!!