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The decline of computers as a general-purpose technology

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Re: The decline of computers as a general-purpose technology

#101

Post by swiley »

javajosh wrote: post #25
brainless wrote: post #6

This is what I personally feel is just missing these days. I was never part of the leading edge of hobby computing. I was very far off, geographically, growing up a teenager in India. But back then, 1998 - 2006 ish, I feel the Internet was a lot more about experiments. I would read up on some software or hardware group all the time. LUGs were way popular. I used to be on chat rooms from MIT or other unis every other…

Software is economically worthless without making it artificially scarce. A lot of "software innovation" is not about building better software, but building software you can charge for , which means "walled gardens", patents, DRM, license servers, anti-tampering mechanisms, and the like. In essence all content (music, movies, software, books, etc) follows the same pattern. Note that profit-driven entities can give aw…

>Software is economically worthless without making it artificially scarce.

If that were the case no software would be written except by hobbyists as a kind of joke. Software provides value other than being scarce and it's really the maintenance of the software that people are wanting (those paying attention at least) not the software itself.

Re: The decline of computers as a general-purpose technology

#102

Post by kristianpaul »

Yeah computers are everywhere now “ Collectively, these findings make it clear that the economics of processors has changed dramatically, pushing computing into specialized domains that are largely distinct and will provide fewer benefits to each other. Moreover, because this cycle is self-reinforcing, it will perpetuate itself, further fragmenting general purpose computing. As a result, more applications will split off and the rate of improvement of universal processors will further slow.”

Re: The decline of computers as a general-purpose technology

#103

Post by MarkusWandel »

brainless wrote: post #6

This is what I personally feel is just missing these days. I was never part of the leading edge of hobby computing. I was very far off, geographically, growing up a teenager in India. But back then, 1998 - 2006 ish, I feel the Internet was a lot more about experiments. I would read up on some software or hardware group all the time. LUGs were way popular. I used to be on chat rooms from MIT or other unis every other…

I was a computer geek from about 1981 onwards, starting with Commodore PETs at high school. These machines were uniquely accessible. You could do surprisingly creative graphics using only the graphic characters hardwired into the machine (no bitmaps, colours or sprites). But these characters were printed right on the keyboard, and could be used in normal BASIC "PRINT" statements to do quite performant animations and such, without any advanced programming skill.

That was as good as it got. The difference between a beginnner dabbling with his first PRINT loop and an advanced assembly language programmer wasn't that great because the machine was so limited; you could go from one extreme to the other in skill in a year or two if you were interested enough. My natural response to seeing the "MISER" adventure, after solving it of course, was "I have all the programming skills to make a game like that" and did so.

And while then as now, only Then, it seemed, most of the rest of the population (the other 80-90%) got computers too, Commodore 64s mostly where I lived. And still, even if only a tiny minority actually programmed their own stuff, it felt like a part of a vibrant scene, you could always show off your stuff.

With modern machines, even without the discouragement of locked down operating systems, missing accessible programming languages and such... there is just no hope of making something "cool" you can impress your friends with. So the tiny minority that does learn HTML5, Javascript, Arduino programming, what have you, is relatively obscure and seems to be a shadow of its former self. It isn't really. It's just that 99.99% of the computing power now in the hands of the population will never be tinkered with.

Re: The decline of computers as a general-purpose technology

#104

Post by ghaff »

kuschku wrote: post #77
stavros wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the past, there were only enough components to fill a few shelves. Also, you can get many, many components from local stores now, if you're willing to pay the 4x-10x premium. Not many people are, so local stores aren't as common.

In 2010, the local store had more components than I can order at reichelt, and was cheaper than aliexpress (if you include shipping). I really miss having a place (back then we even had ad dozen of them in a few km distance) with a huge selection carrying every component you might ever need, and with enough technical expertise that you could show your circuit diagram and get feedback how to improve it. This is someth…

>I really miss having a place (back then we even had ad dozen of them in a few km distance) with a huge selection carrying every component you might ever need

That sounds very atypical. I live outside a major US metro and I know of one good computer store in the area (Micro Center). I imagine there a few small places that carry electronic components but not sure how many. And it wasn't much different 10 to 20 years ago unless you count Radio Shack which wasn't really all that great.

Re: The decline of computers as a general-purpose technology

#105

Post by Zigurd »

"Personal" computers were subversive when first introduced. They were designed for complete control by an individual. They were also, initially, not networked. When networks first appeared it was with the assumption that the user community of the network did not have a persistent high level of malicious security threats.

In a kludgy, gradual way personal computers were tamed. This was inevitable. If you network completely general purpose, user-controlled machines in an institutional environment you will get security chaos.

Some of this, though, like putting digital rights management into personal computers, was tragically evil. What we are left with is neither here nor there: Computers are not secure. Our communications are not secure and are under constant surveillance. And we do not control machines we supposedly own. Lose, lose, lose.

You cannot have security and surveillance and central control of "personal" devices. You cannot protect "digital rights" and sell entertainment content to users that truly control their personal computers.

Re: The decline of computers as a general-purpose technology

#106

Post by mattkevan »

Thing is, in the ‘olden days’, the only thing you could do with a home computer was tinker - the job of a computer was to be a computer but little else. And the number of people interested in doing that was small.

Today, the job of a computer is everything. Computers are in everything and do everything. They are our interface to the world. Their value is what they enable - writing, tax returns, video consumption, gaming and everything else, not the fact they’re a ‘computer’.

For those of us who want a computer to tinker with, we’ve never had it so good. There’s so many more options than there’s ever been for hackable tech. Just because most people don’t want to do that doesn’t mean they’re wrong, it just means they have different priorities.

I love the fact I don’t have to muck about with my iPhone to get it to work just as much as I love mucking about with my raspberry pi to get it to work.

Re: The decline of computers as a general-purpose technology

#107

Post by A4ET8a8uTh0 »

G3n0t wrote: post #62
user-the-name wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Learn what? Installing Linux on a computer doesn't really teach you anything much at all about computers. It teaches you about Linux .

Non sense. Linux makes many details about computers much more explicit than Windows does. Even installing Ubuntu teaches you something about how computers boot, what partitions are and file systems do. Linux also makes it easy to get started in programming on the OS level -- thanks to the Internet it is way easier to find information about how everything works. So from a learning experience perspective, a kid tinkeri…

Agreed. I still remember my first foray into linux install. PC wouldn't boot afterwards and I had no one to shepherd me through it. These days if I want to get information on how to get something working, 9/10 someone already posted it for your benefit.

Some of things are worse, but some things got infinitely better.

Re: The decline of computers as a general-purpose technology

#108

Post by nightski »

IgorPartola wrote: post #88
brainless wrote: post #6

This is what I personally feel is just missing these days. I was never part of the leading edge of hobby computing. I was very far off, geographically, growing up a teenager in India. But back then, 1998 - 2006 ish, I feel the Internet was a lot more about experiments. I would read up on some software or hardware group all the time. LUGs were way popular. I used to be on chat rooms from MIT or other unis every other…

The difference is that those people who are happy with YouTube videos wouldn’t have been tinkering with computers in 2006. You have to remember that tinkering with computers was and still is a nerdy niche. Let’s say there are 1000 people in the world. Of those, 10 are hackers (in the “tinker with computers” sense, not on the malicious sense), 20 are enthusiasts, the rest are neither. In 1990, you’d have 15 people on…

You are creating a false dichotomy of cat videos vs. hacker. I've watched a cat video or two. I've also spent the vast majority of my life programming (coming up on 40).

My point is, video games were my gateway to programming. I got into mods and then expanded from there. I'm sure I am not alone. It's these natural paths that spark curiosity which are being cut off.

Re: The decline of computers as a general-purpose technology

#109

Post by javajosh »

marcosdumay wrote: post #94
javajosh wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've always thought of it as the turn-style in front of the theme-park. Without that turn-style, the theme-part is economically worthless no matter how good it is.

Yes, that's the idea, but keep in mind that "economically worthless" has a literal meaning that is almost opposite of what you are trying to say.

I just mean you can't charge for it directly. "Utility" is perhaps what you mean. Note that the most important achievements (scientific and artistic) in human history were economically worthless for their authors, but have had enormous indirect positive economic benefits.

Re: The decline of computers as a general-purpose technology

#110

Post by LocalH »

exporectomy wrote: post #56
shaan7 wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But phones? I just can't be bothered to care about them. Can I make calls and check some maps? It's great! I understand where you are coming from, and it makes 100% sense if you own a PC/laptop as well. But guess what? In a lot of places the majority of population (including younger people) do NOT have them. Their first and only experience of computers is a mobile phone. Even though "teenagers who care about comput…

Is it really any more limiting? They can make programs in Scratch or other web apps on their phone. It's not "real" native software but it wasn't in the 1980's either. Kids then used BASIC interpreters. Compilers for "real" programming languages like C were unaffordable. Even assembly language and machine language were often inaccessible because computers didn't have an assembler or hex editor and you couldn't get ne…

ML wasn't totally inaccessible by that metric, it was quite common to store ML in DATA statements and POKE it into the desired memory locations. Depending on the platform it would either be directly called with SYS or CALL type statements, or it'd be vectored through USR() (or perhaps the ampersand in Applesoft).
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