
Living with a Computer (1982) - johnny99
http://www.theatlantic.com/past/issues/82jul/fallows.htm?single_page=true
======
aleyan

        When I think I'm finished with an article, 
        I set the print speed to Slow. This runs the 
        printer at about 100 words per minute, or roughly 
        the pace of reading aloud. I stuff my ears with 
        earplugs and then lean over the platen as the 
        printing begins. Watching the article printed 
        at this speed is like hearing it read; infelicities 
        are more difficult to ignore than when you are 
        scooting your eye over words on a page.
    

The author forces himself to read slowly to make his mind reevaluate his
words. Does any one else do this or perhaps pass their compositions through a
text 2 speech software? It seems like it could potentially be a useful writing
aid.

~~~
jdpage
Yes, absolutely. This is standard practice among my peers in creative writing;
the last step of editing is to read your piece aloud (to the cat, or the dog,
or to the mirror, or a human victim, or just to yourself), slowly and
carefully.

My friend who is finishing up his novel is currently in the reading-aloud
stage. He's had various friends in and out of his house to listen to chapters
as he does it, too.

As for myself, I've been caught by my friends standing in back stairwells
reading papers aloud thirty minutes before class more times than I care to
admit.

~~~
samatman
Keep doing it, you're likely an auditory thinker and reading aloud activates
different structures from silent reading. Personally I've been known to think
in actual text, which is somewhat unusual, but if I'm ever going to speak
words I'm writing, I say them out loud beforehand, usually several times.

------
rconti
I'm only very slightly older than this article; my first computer was an XT,
so I missed the early hobbyist days of the many competing platforms; I was
well into the clone era.

One thing really jumped out at me:

"Of the ones I've seen, a green-tinted monitor by NEC (model JB 1201M) seemed
the best bargain, at $210; but patriots should take note that NEC stands for
Nippon Electric Company."

We like to marvel at how fast technology moves. But cultural attitudes can
change just as fast.

~~~
brudgers
Quick, name a car produced by the big three in 1982 that you would actually
want to own. "Morning in America" was loaded jingoism. In the eighties and
early nineties Walmart filled its stores with a "Buy American" campaign.

That's part one.

The second part is that the audience of the _Atlantic_ 1982 contained a lot of
people born before the baby boom who lived through World War II and listened
to a lot of anti-Japanese propaganda during their formative years. The casual
racism it produced (helped along by the formal racism of their youth) was one
reason jingoism was revived as a successful political strategy in the 1980,
82, and 84 election cycles.

Jingoism is still successful, but it had been before the early '80's, the
1960's and 70's were the exception, not the norm. What nobody would have bet
on in 1982 is a non-white president or same-sex marriage. Old attitudes toward
Japan die off with the people who hold them.

------
screwedup
Perhaps I'm just glorifying an age I don't remember, but I'm somewhat jealous
of a time when computers weren't black boxes - everybody who owned one had to
buy separate components, do bits of physical maintenance, and write code.

~~~
drblast
Oh the manuals that came with the machines...they had schematics in them and
explained every part of the machine and what it did. It was glorious.

It would also be difficult to do now as the machines are more complex. But if
you imagine today that every new PC came with a full MSDN subscription and the
Intel system programmer's manuals, that's about how it was.

Of course, it took many minutes to load a program from floppy disk, so there
was a lot of not-so-glorious waiting.

~~~
smellf
Yeah I can understand romanticizing the parts of this guy's experience with
computers, but it wasn't all gravy. Did you read the part where he marveled at
his new "daisy wheel" printer only having broken down once in a year of use?
Or the disk drive that took 10 minutes to write out a few kB?

And how about those prices? Sure, some were $400, but you'd need $3000+ for a
machine that has non-volatile storage, can run arbitrary programs, and has an
input and an output device. $2000+ dollars for a hard drive storing a few MB?
Not to mention the horror of completely undecided OS and instruction set
architecture wars.

It's cool to imagine the simplicity of this dude tinkering with his printer
made from a converted typewriter and unplugging the entire thing when the
thunderheads roll in, but we're definitely better off where we are today.

~~~
mushly
And those are 1982 prices too.

------
jtheory
Nice wrap-up:

    
    
      ...For any of these systems (not including the Osborne), I'd spend no more than
      $6,000, or half as much as for the Displaywriter.
    
      Godspeed as you follow this advice; meanwhile, I'll be spending nothing, sticking
      with SOL and The Electric Pencil, and hoping for a world in which my sons can
      grow up to have a better computer than their father had.
    

Looks like that wish worked out pretty well.

------
tempestn
I enjoyed this line: "The new machines will require different disk-operating
systems, and may therefore inspire another DOS war. [...] many people suspect
that IBM will wage a counteroffensive with a DOS _of its own_."

Close, but not quite! As it turned out, choosing to not exactly make a DOS of
its own had rather large consequences for the computing landscape...

~~~
tempestn
The reference to (insane early-80s) interest rates was fun too.

------
fit2rule
Old computers never die - their owners do. You can still have fun with an old
machine - just get one, turn it on, and go for it.

~~~
WalterBright
Yeah, they do die. My old IBM PC, put in storage in working condition, came
out and when I turned it on there was a snapping noise and the machine died.

This fate has befallen all my machines older than 15 years or so. They won't
turn on, or turn on and fail the POST, won't boot, whatever. Sometimes there's
that fine smell of smoke being released accompanying the failure.

On the other hand, my Carver amp I bought 30+ years ago still works fine and I
run it 16 hours a day, every day. It's the best, by far, piece of electronics
I've ever bought when considering bang for the buck. The same goes for the
Dahlquist speakers it drives.

~~~
FreeFull
Maybe it's dried out/leaky capacitors? With older computers, often replacing
the capacitors is the only thing that it takes to get them working again.

~~~
moheeb
This raises the philosophical question of where the life of the computer truly
lies. Is it within the capacitor? Is it within the network of the individual
parts?

If you replace the capacitor did you resurrect the dead or just fix a broken
part?
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship_of_Theseus](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship_of_Theseus)

~~~
lmm
Back when I went to university it was normal for my friends to gradually
upgrade pieces, leaving after three years with a computer that had none of the
the components it had arrived with.

------
WalterBright
I remember my dad writing a book in the 70's. My mom would type up each new
draft. Over and over, she'd type the whole book. Getting a word processor is
like getting a sewing machine in the 1800s.

------
j_lev
If those prices are 1982 prices then you can multiply by about 2.5 to find out
what they'd be today.

------
zyxley
It's entertaining to contrast the writer's comments about typewriters to the
modern popularity of apps like Hanx Writer.

