zestinpeace

Another animal on the computer

  • he/him

Call me Zest. :3 Internet furry, fan of art, computers, and overthinking. Sydney, Australia. Born '98.


haven't had time to really work out my thoughts in a post, but i do think that what makes retro computing so interesting to me is that it's like a time machine, allowing us to recapture the ephemeral experiences of computing throughout the decades.

we take for granted the simplicity of use and complexity of underlying operation in computers today, but that didn't arise out of nowhere. i think it's fascinating to explore the upper (and lower) limits of computer usage throughout history, to realise just what it was like to use a computer, down to the minutiae of experience - the hum of an old hard drive or CRT, the way floppy disks feel in your hand, the overall experience of using old installation media.

those subtleties would otherwise be completely forgotten, as "what it means to use a computer" radically, inevitably changes over time, if it weren't for archival and museum work as well as individual hobbyist work


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in reply to @zestinpeace's post:

A lot of marketing surrounding computing tends to try and give the impression that they're boxes of magic that Just Work. Using older tech that requires more of the user is a good way to remind yourself the nature of these things as machines.