The Future is Almost Now
Last night I was reading about the history of the BlackBerry, and I was (once again) struck by how fast technology moves. The article described that Research In Motion (possibly the coolest tech company name), the maker of the BlackBerry, started out producing two-way pagers before developing the now ubiquitous Blackberry smartphone, and this made me nostalgic for my old beeper. Man, I loved that thing. I wore it on my belt like a pocket watch. It was so simple. One triple-A battery would last weeks, and the device was always on. When introduced, the pager was cutting edge, but now I look back at it as 'a simpler time'. A time when life moved more slowly. A movie only cost $7, and you would only lock one deadbolt on your front door. Ah, beepers... You future was so bright... Right before 'easy' access to the web came about, my brother bought me a device that hooked up to my TV, and using the paging network, would display news and sports stories. I wish I remembered the name of the service. I think it was in business for about a year before "You've got mail!" hit the scene, and we were all cursing AOL and that damn busy signal.
Kaypro Portable Computer
I used to think that nostalgia was something old people felt when they heard a replay of Amos & Andy radio plays, but my generation, which is not so young anymore, can get misty-eyed about 8-bit Nintendo and the IBM PS/2 Model 25. Case in point, The DigiBarn Computer Museum contains some of the coolest old computers, and I can spend hours reminiscing on that site. "A Kaypro portable! NO WAY!" Remember the original Cray supercomputer? I have more computing power in my digital digital watch than the original Cray!
This is a wonderful time for technology. Competition is driving innovation up and keeping prices down, and we're finally seeing some Star Trek tech come to life. My Garmin sweetly guides me home, speaking to me in dulcet tones, "In 300 feet, stay left on State Road 417..." My Droid listens to music and identifies the song. It tracks my progress while I walk the dog and maps it on Google maps. I can virtually fly over New York City and zoom in on my old apartment building in 3D using Bing maps, or I can just view the streets from eye level using Google Street View. I can set my phaser on maximum and vaporize my enemies with just a push of a button! Well, maybe some day. For now, I'll have to settle for using the Droid to scan bar-codes, translate my spoken words into foreign languages, and doing visual searches on the web with the camera. Still, vaporizing my enemies...***sigh ***
January 28th, 2010 - 19:07
Indeed. As a former PS/2 Model 25 owner I can say, with little reservation or doubt, that booting the OS off a floppy sucked.
Then running WordPerfect off a floppy sucked.
Then having to pop that floppy out to save my paper onto yet another floppy, sucked.
Sure, I saved $250.00 by not having a 4MB (FOUR!) hard drive installed on the thing but, wow, did that 3.5″ drive take a beating. After upgrading my memory to 512k (K!) I thought I would get a major performance boost. What actually happened was a major shut down of all the parts that made the thing go and I was resigned to borrowing my buddy’s Kaypro portable PC. Nice ride. Was better than Kristie’s “word processor” which was nothing more than I typewriter with a tiny LCD screen and would type whole lines after you completed typing them. Very distracting.
So, no, sorry. I pine not for the gold ole days of electronica obscura.
January 29th, 2010 - 00:32
I installed a hard drive on Todd’s 25 back in college. My dad talked me through the procedure over the phone. It was like a $40 phone bill, but we were up an running Leisure Suit Larry in no time.