The wow of computers is gone

I remember when even the dumbest things a computer would do would amaze us all. Remember those days - now computers are blah. Microsoft is a mildew couch. TRON remake was a drag. What will bring back the magic!

Yeah I think back then knowing that something was done by a computer made it more interesting and impressive, now it makes it less so.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-KPhqy7ZwHU

Future computers users should be required to write all their own programs using LOGO or BASIC. This would reintroduce the hey-look-what-I-just-did excitement that is so conspicuously missing nowadays.

I imagine Facebook bio-probes in our mind to tell us what we REALLY want

WOW LOOK AT THE GRAPHICS!!
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1f/Amiga_1000DP.jpg

Computers
Can they ever recapture the glory of their early days? Years ago, we sat in hunched anticipation of Windows '95, travelling the Oregon Trail, punching our lengthy journal entries in Wordpad for our personal journals that could only dream of bursting outside the boundries of their hardened exterior casing. Since then, computers have only gotten smaller, text turned to netspeak, tiny wafer-like chips storing amounts of data that once took an entire room to hold. As such, let's just sum up our review in one word: Meh.

Rating: 4.3

<3 this thread title

Go to a retirement home - you will be like Morpheus dropping knowledge on Oldeo. Blew my grandfather's mind just by showing him Goggle Earth.

I was suprise dho wmany threads are titled "wow"

"a supernatural instrument before whose miracle we used to stand amazed, and which we now employ without giving it a thought, to summon our tailor or to order an ice cream." - Proust talking about the telephone in 1907.

My grandfather-in-law in Indiana wanted to cancel my plane ticket home after I reset his printer prefs.

Proust is one old motherfucker!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qfL6sXxnF-Q

wow

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f3/Amiga_Mouse.jpg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AuvbZpH1QuE

/\ /\ remember my mind being blown by this shit

Go to a retirement home - you will be like Morpheus dropping knowledge on Oldeo. Blew my grandfather's mind just by showing him Goggle Earth.

honestly i probably belong in a retirement home (for more reasons than one, but anyhow...), things like google earth and some iphone apps are almost too much for me

Google Earth gives me vertigo and motion sickness if I get it to fly between two distant points.

Well, harrumph!!! Now I feel as though I've done the old boy a grave disservice!!!

(he posts under the name Old Fart)

the best thing is to prtend you are an alien and randomly "land" somewhere with street vie w- like in brazil

the wow of computers is gone but the dread has increased 100 fold

reading comment on the AMY artificial intelligence apps is funny - some are indignant about things like "Amy belive sin the protestant god!!" - they wanted a robo wife

Romeo: yes you do
ALICE: It goes without saying.. When do I do it?
Romeo: you can now if you want
ALICE: No I don't think I can do it.
Romeo: try
ALICE: I don't have time right now.
Romeo: yes you do
ALICE: It's all good.. When do I do it?
Romeo: now
ALICE: Right now, judge ?
Romeo: why do you keep calling me judge?
ALICE: I am just checking to see if you are still judge.
Romeo: I have never been judge!
ALICE: Can you imagine being judge?
Romeo: no!
ALICE: Excuse me!
Romeo: call me Romeo!
ALICE: Glad to know you, Romeo.
Romeo: thank you
ALICE: you are quite welcome.
Romeo: yes I am
ALICE: Next question? Really interesting.
Romeo: How many dosg can die today?
ALICE: About one million.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technological_singularity

btw, "The Wow of Computers" was my favourite small town electronics store. Sad to hear it has closed down.

What will bring back the magic!

http://www.douglasadams.com/creations/infocomjava.html

strongo OTM

Nostalgic for the cyberpunk mysteries of super hacking and the awesome information superhighway.

i dunno, every now and then my pc still shows me stuff that makes my jaw drop.

the best thing is to prtend you are an alien and randomly "land" somewhere with street vie w- like in brazil

OK, I just did this, and there was a fucking bear on the side of the road in Japan.

i mainly use my computer to file recipes, balance my checkbook, and play knockoffs of Qbert. all that is great, but really I find myself asking what is the use w/o hologram projections, food synthesizers, dna manipulators, etc.? atm it feels like it's just a glorified Texas Instruments calculator

Blew my grandfather's mind just by showing him Goggle Earth

i am w/your grandfather here, there was a point at which i topped out and just became amazed by the detachment of what's being achieved from my own understanding of how things work. so like the internet on trains or w/e. and it's nice to be amazed rather than blasé. i think part of what constantly reiterates how impressive some of this kind of thing is is knowing that there are people making it, probably people of my age group, who were into computers the same amount i was into computers when they were ten, who just have this other-worldly skill at the vanguard of innovation & design. & that so much of the process by which their work is assembled has this slightly utopian vibe; quite often people doing it for enthusiasm rather than money, collaboratively + without acclaim, and with the simple goal of enacting good design or intuitively easing people's processes, like when some gmail engineer is like 'maybe if we see whether, if the message mentions 'attached', we can run a check to see if someone's remembered to attach a thing'.

http://www.vcaspecialtyvets.com/img/template/logo-facebook-like.png technology, anyway.

I've always viewed em as souped-up typewriters tbh

they view you as a puny human tbf

we're like an old married couple :D

@ ― ☝ (am0n - wow!

the wow of computers is gone?? i'm STILL wowed. i'm wowed by what i'm doing right now. like typing this right now...wow! and if i make a mistake, i can just go back and erase it without getting the typewriter correction ribbon out! i just retyped this sentence thirty-two times! WOW!

I remember being impressed by 256 colors

i just changed my username and i didn't even have to lick a stamp this time, wow!

xpost 256 is all you need if you're real, gifs forever

i was so excited every time magazines or the world wide web started talking about a new square of two

listening to this recently

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/511E3JCHKYL._SL500_AA300_.jpg

almost made me excited about computers again.

I love that kraftwerk album - probably my fave
does anyone remember the PET computer?

one of my earliest computer experiences was 4th grade, skipping PE with some nerds to play Star Trek on the school's new PET, but only getting 2/3rds through 'loading...' before we had to go back to class

We had one at school, along with a ton of BBC Micros.

cassette recorder + little TV + cash register =
http://oldcomputers.net/pics/pet2001-black.jpg

http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2011/08/ibm-handson/

IBM Hardson

Klein’s 5150 made him a more capable thinker. My Air made me a faster consumer of media.

qft

When I was a teen in Minneapolis, there was a free niche weekly paper called Computer User. I love that now. A newspaper for those people who use computers.

DUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUDES

http://codinghorror.typepad.com/.a/6a0120a85dcdae970b0128777032aa970c-pi

10 "hi there!"
20 goto 10

run

or something like that

Michelin Man looking svelte there.

I like to think I would have been pissed off as much back then as i am now by the leaden introduction, bizarre musical choices, and awful concepts that range the whole gamut from teenage stoner nerd to bad european performance art. I think 5:20-6:20 might be my favourite wtf moment.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R2WbusNJie8

10 PRINT "THANK YOU BASIC GOD"
20 GOTO 10

I miss the days of commodore 64 tapes not working, and spending ages typing code for some graphic do-da, that didn't work.

I want a lap top that's perfectly pliable, and doesn't get hot...so you could totally adjust the computer to your sitting position. That'd be great.

Maybe if it was made of low melting point temperature plastic, so as it got hotter during use if conformed to the shape of your lap?

dont melt your testicles

does anyone remember the PET computer?

yeh, a friend of my dad's had one when i was a wee lad

remember it lived in his basement along with (obligatory?) ascii art rendition of playboy centerfold hanging on the wall

i always felt doing

1 FLASH

before a 10 print/20 goto 10 program really classed things up a bit

10 MODE2
20 REPEAT
30 COLOURRND(8)+7
40 PRINT"snoball RULES!!! ";
50 UNTIL0

I wonder if there is anywhere we basic nostalgics can sport our styles?

http://www.mytinyphone.com/uploads/users/mankillerx5/487737.jpg

3D printers blow my mind.

The Dragon dictation app just translated my dog's barking with excitement upon seeing the leash in my hand: "Where who are who are" etc.

That's probably about right.

Those voice recognition programs are amazingly bad

batteries are still stuck in the stone age, I am waiting for radical advances in battery technology to wow me

Yeah why cant charged batteries last months at a time? It really is daft.

I think "physics" might be at fault but I don't trust scientists

=)

All games that I only got to play at friends' houses but I was certain one day I would be lucky enough to own...and never did :'(

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lNk4-Up1aws

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jzsZHMLuLjo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GcrVMS83-3U

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i-usjiN_Oq0

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_0kKGOQOYxg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N4m1DsHJVpk

http://www.emptythebench.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/Lee-Carvallo-Putting-Challenge.JPG

U love The Simpsons soooo much!

Its just my thing now haha. Like markers and his snacks.

i used to really liek playing simpsons in the arcade with four people

5 LET x=0
10 FOR f=0 TO 20*PI STEP PI/30
20 PLOT 128+x*SIN f, 88+x*COS f
25 LET x=x+0.1
30 NEXT f

is that a fractakl design or something

nah, just a spiral

All games that I only got to play at friends' houses but I was certain one day I would be lucky enough to own...and never did :'(

but now you do! wow! http://nintendo8.com/toplist/more/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AVHY7QfTZVU