i think a lot about those kinda boomers who want to harken back to the good old days before smartphones existed. because i'm at a stage in my life where i'm starting to form contrary opinions about popular developments in tech, and i wonder if what i feel now is similar to how those previous generations felt?

tech was just cooler and better before. i hate streaming services; i hate how they rip off artists, i hate how music disappears from them because of their awful bureaucratic distribution systems, i hate all the fake copyright claims, i hate how they log all your listening data. i hate phone manufacturers; i hate how headphone jacks aren't a thing anymore, i hate how i have to buy a shitty dongle that i have to charge separately that loses connection if i put my hand in front of it just to listen to music, i hate how the other option is getting a new pair of (also separately charged) headphones that i won't like because they won't sound like my DT-770s, i hate how phone manufacturers control what options the consumer is given just based on what's trendy rather than what is actually useful.

i'm in the market for an iPod. i'm straight up considering buying tech from over a decade ago and tinkering with it to make it fit my needs. i run a cassette tape label. i buy my friends music on cassette tapes. cassettes are so cool! people send me Spotify links and then i always have to remind them that i can't listen to it, because i've never had a Spotify account. my media library lives on my server PC, where i have all the audio files i need in the highest possible quality. i buy so much music from Bandcamp. i still buy CDs regularly just to rip them in the highest possible quality; heck, i still even rip music from YouTube sometimes if i can't find it in anything higher. in that sense, i still acquire music the same way i did in 2011, i never stopped doing it.

i also fucking hate generative AI. i fucking hate generative AI! people will call you a luddite for that (without even realizing the larger implications of what they're saying). your friends and your grandpa and your mom and your coworkers all think it's so funny that they can generate a picture of Donald Trump as a piece of broccoli, right? it's becoming so normal now. it's the next big thing. but these developments in tech will cost people their jobs — something that was previously said about the rise of home computing. these developments in tech will further alienate us from eachother — something that was previously said about the rise of smartphones. yet i sit here behind my keyboard, thinking computers and smartphones are absolutely very cool tech. they are! all the work i do wouldn't have been possible without them. my whole world revolves around them.

and maybe the generations after me live in worlds that revolve around phones and Instagram and Spotify and SHEIN and TikTok. we all know the stereotypes and tales surrounding them. they don't know how to use a file explorer. they can only watch videos with Subway Surfers gameplay displayed right next to it. there's thousands of stories of "iPad kids", growing up with parents who just shove them behind an iPad where they get subjected to brain-hemorrhaging slop 24/7. and that's a really awful development!

but then my generation is the one that was addicted to Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas and Call of Duty. the news was always filled with thinkpieces on how videogames are brain-hemorrhaging slop that ruins the minds of kids all over the world. my boomer parents once debated whether they should send me to a troubled teens camp in the Ardennes for my "videogame addiction". i never suffered from anything like that! i was extremely depressed, and my parents were so emotionally distant from me that they could never figure that out, so they blamed it on those darn videogames instead. i turned out fine! but will the next generations turn out fine, though? are my concerns even valid, knowing that i could easily be misplacing the same concerns my boomer parents had for me onto those kids?

i grew up using phpBB forums. i had a personal website in one form or another since i was, like, 10 years old. i've had a YouTube account since 2006 — which has been rendered inaccessible due to it being linked to an email address from an ISP which hasn't existed for over a decade now. for the longest time, most of my gaming friends were on Hamachi, which we used to play multiplayer rounds of Midtown Madness 2 together. i still can't believe the original Nintendo DS is a retro console already. i still miss Hyves.

there used to be a time where the internet was a place that users created together. those phpBB forums didn't belong to any big corporation, they were all ran by the community members themselves, often with a monthly donation loading bar in a banner on the homepage. everything is a subreddit now, everything is a Discord server now. everything is being enshittified for profit by venture capitalists, and the end users are being locked out from having a say in any of it. now i'm sure gen Z'ers and after aren't all happy about this either, but i'd reckon that most also just don't have the historical context of what the internet and popular tech were like before all of that. they've grown up within enshittification. just like how i grew up within the mass adoption of home computers and smartphones.

all these newer generations are growing up while having all this bullshit pushed on them by corporations as the current technology meta. generative AI, in-app purchases, streaming services, digital rights management, bluetooth headphones, YouTube Kids, enshittification, et cetera. they won't know a world without these things! but then again, isn't the same thing also true for me? i don't know a world without smartphones, phpBB boards, Twitter, iPods, peer-to-peer filesharing, software piracy, CDs, Windows XP, PS/2 keyboards, et cetera. i think that's the last time tech was ever really good. because i grew up with it. gen Z'ers will think what they're experiencing will have been the last time tech was ever really good. boomers will think the mass adoption of TVs and record players was the last time tech was ever really good. i wonder if we're all any different.

watching a generational divide construct itself in real time is honestly kinda horrifying.

I think the very real difference between the tech of 15-25 years ago and the tech of today is that there was intention and purpose to things.

Capitalism has never not done immeasurably large amounts of harm, but I’d argue it was less in the era of tech we grew up with. At least then, most tech and media was developed with the intent of providing something inherently worthy of its asking price, because that’s how you earned and retained customers. This still came at the usual costs of exploitative human labor, and there were no shortage of scams, but it certainly wasn’t like today where everything is a scam.

When we were kids, the motive behind the creation and marketing of computers and games and music was, as always, the generation of capital. But that generation started and usually ended at the point of sale. You got your iPod, your PlayStation 2, your electronic toy. Do with it as you please.

Obviously, Sony gets a kickback from software sales, but that’s how they were able to get you a cutting edge computer entertainment system for $299.99 in 2000. Honestly, this was the fairest era in video game console and software pricing. $49.99 was the high end, and a lot of releases came in below that. The lack of a digital marketplace meant the value of games was solely in what the physical discs and cases were worth. There was no spike in the price of something that has existed for years because it was suddenly ripped from sale, never to return, because the license allowing them to put a BMW on the cover or Snoop Dogg on the soundtrack ran out.

Apple locked down the iPod way harder than most MP3 players, you had to use iTunes, and their motivation was to sell you songs on the store. It was the pioneer of what eventually mutated into this gross “you will own nothing and be happy” world we’re in now. But you didn’t need to partake in that to use your iPod. It certainly didn’t exclude you from the consumption of music the way not having Spotify does now. Record stores & places like FYE were still around, big box stores still sold CDs, music piracy was more commonplace and, depending on when in this timeline we’re talking, easier.

If my PS2 broke, I traded my games in and bought an Xbox. If I didn’t like your album, I didn’t buy your next one.

Now, if I don’t like your album, it doesn’t matter. You aren’t making money from me streaming it, and even if you were entitled to a cut of my Spotify subscription fee, what am I gonna do? Cancel and lose all my playlists? Go subscribe to another service with the same exact issues?

And if my PS5 breaks, I have to buy another one— or hundreds to thousands spent on digital games disappears.

The level of connectivity we have today led to the fall of physical media— disguised then as a revolution in convenience, affordability and accessibility only because They needed to sell us on it.

That’s why every tech company and startup has operated at gargantuan losses for their entire existence. They do this and provide a service for free or cheap and make it good because we have to see it as an upgrade from what we already have. We have to integrate it into our daily lives. We have to stop buying DVDs and CDs for long enough that Apple and Samsung and Sony and Microsoft take away the option for us to even choose to do so.

Then, when we couldn’t go back if we wanted to, at least without spending astronomically more effort and money to do so and excluding ourselves from giant slices of modern culture, they suddenly aren’t so worried about how good of a deal Netflix is anymore: they own the production studios, the content only exists there now because they licensed it as such, and you have no choice but to pay up or miss out.

Facebook sells your data and inundates you with ads for literal scams and purposely shows you information that will make you mad, but you can’t delete it. It’s your only remaining line of communication with Grandma— even if all she does is forward you AI generated political posts originating from a Russian held at figurative gunpoint.

The work you’ve spent real humans hours of your life to do is being stolen— not even the old fashioned way where someone has to go through the effort of learning to draw well enough to replicate your style, or still has to physically play the melody they copied from your song on a guitar with their human hands. No, get-rich-quick scheme losers are typing it into their phone and spitting the result onto the same social media site you did, but they’ve got a group of other losers who think it’s so neat that they can “do” art— mayhaps even make a bunch of money off it! —without having to do anything at all besides wish it existed.

So, no. You’re not just getting old and grumpy. Things are worse, because technology has advanced in a way that enables the rich and powerful to control aspects of your day to day life. Your agency in your work, leisure, shopping, diet and social life have been stolen and sold back to you.

God, I wanna start popping heads.

Released in Feb 2009 for around £70. The Dingoo (Chinese: 丁果) is a handheld gaming console that supports music/video playback and open game development. The system features an on-board radio and recording program.

It is similar in size to the Game Boy Micro and has an XMB style interface similar to the PSP. Dozens of official and homebrew games were made for the system.

It has sold around 1 million units.

Sony released a smaller version of the PSP in 2009, The PSP Go is about 50% smaller than the original PSP. Instead of having a UMD disk slot the system has a built in 16GB of flash storage as well as bluetooth. It was the first digital only handheld from a major hardware publisher. The USB port was also removed in favor of a proprietary connector.

In February 2010, it was reported it might re-launch due to the lack of consumer interest and poor sales. In June 2010, Sony began bundling the console with 10 free downloadable games. In October that year, Sony announced it would reduce the price of the unit. On April 20, 2011, the manufacturer announced that the PSP Go would be discontinued outside of North America.

It sold around 100,000 units.

The Nintendo DSi was released in late 2009 for the price of $170. It removed the GBA cartridge slot of the DS in favor of larger screens, better wi-fi connectivity, and two cameras. Nintendo stated that families often share DS systems. Its new functionality was intended to facilitate personalization, so as to encourage each member of a household to purchase a DSi. It was backwards compatible with DS games and several games had DSi-specific features like Pokemon Black and White.

Nintendo launched digital only DSi Ware on the eShop for indie developers to release games for it.

An XL version of the system was also released that was much larger as a common complaint about the DS was it was uncomfortable for users with large hands.

It sold over 41 million units.

GP2X Wiz was released in May 2009 for $179.99, and was the first console from both Game Park to also be released outside South Korea.

It featured video/audio playback as well as being able to play Shockwave Flash media.

The Pandora was released in 2010 as a spiritual successor to the GP32/GP2X. It was an open source Linux based system featuring a full thumb keyboard as well as more traditional controls.

The device is also intended for use as a portable media playback device with a storage capacity of up to 128 GB of data (64 GB SDXC cards) across two SD memory card slots.

About 7500 Pandoras have been made and sold altogether between 2010 and 2014, with further production made impossible due to shortage of WiFi chips.

Nintendo released the 3DS in Feb/March 2011 for the initial price of $250. It featured more powerful graphics rendering. It featured a glasses free stereoscopic 3D screen that allowed for users to see much more depth in games, similar to 3D movies. There was also several Augmented Reality related features developed for the cameras. An XL model was released a year later.

Initially the 3DS sold very poorly and on July 28, 2011, Nintendo announced the 3DS would be getting a price cut of almost a third of the system's original price, from $250 to $170. In an effort to compensate those who had paid the original price, the company introduced the Ambassador Program, thru which existing 3DS owners were eligible (they must have accessed the eShop at least once prior to August 21) to download ten NES games and ten Game Boy Advance games at no extra cost.

It went on to sell over 75 million units.

The Xperia Play is a smartphone with elements of a handheld game console produced by Sony. With the marketshare for dedicated handheld game consoles diminishing into the 2010s due to the rapid expansion of smartphones with cheap downloadable games, Sony attempted to tackle the issue with two separate devices; a dedicated video game console with elements of a smartphone, the PlayStation Vita.

The device featured games graphically within the range of similar portable devices and plays these games via an application known as PlayStation Mobile.

Sony finally released their followup to the PSP in 2011 for $250. The PS Vita was again graphically superior to its Nintendo competitor. It featured a much larger OLED screen and was capable of HD visuals.

The sales of the Vita started strong at launch but then stalled and greatly underperformed. In 2013 Sony dropped the price to $200 to try and remain competitive, but 3rd party developers were becoming more and more reluctant to support the system. The Monster Hunter franchise in particular was a huge loss for the system as Capcom had decided to only develop the games for the 3DS this time around. With support diminishing, Shahid Ahmad, Sony's Director of Strategic Content, instead began a new approach to games, through directly reaching out to, and making accommodations for independent developers who had previously released games for mobile and PC platforms. While not completely reversing the sales trends of the Vita, the lower costs of making or porting smaller-budget games made it easier for devs to make a profit on the system's smaller userbase, and in turn, increased consumer attention on the console, keeping the device afloat. Ahmad also maintained interest in the device by directly interacting with consumers on social media; the game Tales of Hearts R was localized into English only because it was number one in a survey of games desired on the platform.

Sony even attempted to revitalize interest in the system when the PS4 launched, updating it to have Remote Play functionality and also added support for PS TV, a a game streaming platform Sony was launching around the same time. Sadly none of these efforts produced enough sales and Sony eventually retired the system.

There is still a very active homebrew scene for the Vita, as it is still one of the most powerful portable game systems ever produced.

It sold around 15 million units.

An "entry-level" version of the 3DS, the Nintendo 2DS, with a fixed "slate" form factor and lacking stereoscopic (3D) functionality, was released in Western markets in October 2013 for $130. It was marketed towards families with younger children as it was less breakable.

Later on an XL version with a clamshell design was also released.

Nvidia Shield Portable was released in mid 2013 for $300. Through Nvidia's GameStream app, Shield Portable allows the streaming of games running on a desktop PC equipped with a GeForce GTX 650 or higher video card.

The Android 4.4.2 update for Shield Portable adds Console Mode, which allows a Shield Portable to be connected to a TV at either 720p, 1080p or 4K resolution (either using a wireless connection or MicroHDMI) and controlled with a Bluetooth controller, and software for mapping on-screen control buttons to the device's hardware buttons for Android games which do not natively support them.

Due to being out of stock for many years, it is presumably discontinued, but there has not yet been any official announcement from Nvidia.

If you enjoyed this post please check out the other parts in this series.

Part 1: https://cohost.org/AgentOtter/post/5565885-a-brief-history-of-v
Part 2: https://cohost.org/AgentOtter/post/5584876-a-brief-history-of-h
Part 3: https://cohost.org/AgentOtter/post/5599570-a-brief-history-of-v
Part 4: https://cohost.org/AgentOtter/post/5614025-a-brief-history-of-h