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On what is modern

Entered: in Alphaword on Alphasmart Dana | Date: 20200131

In my mind, things that are modern start around 1992. This goes for computers, music, movies, books, whathaveyou. I typically stop collecting "classic" band's albums at this delineation. I am much less interested in, for example, operating systems by Microsoft, post-1992.

I did not have an 8bit computer as a kid. My first computer was an IBM XT. This possessed an Intel 8088 running at 4.77MHz, and had a 1MB RAM expansion and a 20MB MFM hard disk. After this came a Macintosh SE and a Macintosh LCII. The LCII is what I used right up until the afore mentioned modern era.

My maternal grandfather, who passed away in 1990, was a smart dude. He held a few tech industry jobs back in the day. He kicked himself for not investing in Apple when the Steves were in their garage. He worked at GTE on databases. He worked at IBM and is named on a couple of patents in that era (early 1970s). He is the person who gave my my first computer in 1987 when my family returned to the United States from West Germany. A couple of years later, he gave me the Mac SE. The cool thing about this, besides receiving a couple of computers, it they came loaded with dozens of diskettes of development tools.

On the IBM XT, I had the BASICA compiler, the Borland C and Pascal compilers, and a host of other nifty things such as 4DOS. DOS 2.11 was what the machine came to me running, but I later upgraded it to DOS 3.33. On the Mac, I had a number of development tools, however, I fell in love with Hypercard. I used things such as the Apple Resource Editor to strip sound and graphics resources out of other programs (such as SIM Earth that my parents bought me), and added those resources to Hypercard stacks. My first music recordings were scripted in Hypercard and recorded to cassette tape (first left channel, then manually synced to the right channel as the Mac SE and LCII outputted mono).

Post 1992 really was the modern era. In 1993, I got my first ISP account. I had dial up via a Hayes external 2400bps modem. This was on the Macintosh LCII. I bought a book called something like "The Macintosh Internet Kit." It came with floppy disks that had Mosaic (or some other browser of the era for Mac?), TurboGopher, Archie and Wais clients, and lots of documentation. The web was much smaller, and back then it was perfect. So perfect, in fact, that I really had no interest in Gopher back then. I tried it out numerous times, but my WWW browser could display gifs (jpegs were opened in an external program to decompress and display them, and were less cool). It took my 2400bps modem one hour to download 1MB. I did not encounter this on many occasions. Most of the web back then was very simple HTML. and small image files. Downloading software was time consuming, and tied up the family telephone line.

In 1996 or so I got a 486dx4100. Well, first I picked up a 286 motherboard someone tossed, then a 386, then the 486... it may have been 1997 or so for the 486. When I had the 486, at first I did not have a VGA monitor. So I ran Windows 3.11, and later Windows 95 with a CGA screen. In this configuration, Windows used the CGA high resolution mode, which was 2 color. I had acquired a 14.4kbps modem card around this time. I used Internet Explorer 2 with that CGA screen, and also lynx and at that time would dial into the Rio Grande Freenet. The RGF was a free use Unix system and ISP in El Paso, Texas that was ran by the local community college. My first personal website was made during this time. Eventually I acquired a used VGA monitor, pretty sure all of this equipment in the time line was free.

In 1998, at 22 I graduated from college and got a job as a programmer. At this time I was provided with a dual channel (128k) ISDN line to my apartment. This was the time when I first installed Linux. I bought a big box copy of Red Hat at a large electronics store. I had a block of static IP addresses from my ISP and a high speed line. This was my first self hosting. Back then hosting email was easy. I had a website and a mail server. This all still feels very modern to me. It is a stark contrast to the before times of 16 bit machines. Downloads were peppy. Streaming video was present. I was an adult and purchased this hardware on my own. Dinking around on a computer was still fun, but at that point it was beginning to be very tied to having a network.

That may be the demarcation right there in a nutshell, and I do not think I am alone in recognizing it. The classic period for me from the 80s to 1992 was offline. I'd dial into local BBS's from time to time but it was a treat, and there was a time limit to be on. I would spend my time writing code, or playing games, or writing stories, or scripting music. I didn't care about the news, or other people's status messages. I listened to music on cassette tape or on the radio. It was a time that feels much more separate. I feel I was a stand alone being. And yet it did not feel like isolation. I socialized in school, rode my skateboard in the neighborhood, there were plenty of things to do. Also, in 1992, I moved from El Paso to southern New Mexico. There were no paved roads. I was old enough to drive. Shortly after that the internet became a thing for me. This likely makes the dividing line all the more engraved for me.

The world as a whole has changed drastically. There are points of reference for me here. I still hold 1992 was the end of an era. 2001 was another. The old world died that year, in September. 2012 was the birth of the current existence. That even takes a different turn in 2016. I feel we have lost a lot. The world was not a safe place in the past, but it was better. Eschewing all oldness just because it is old neglects the fact that it was built on, in some cases, hundreds or thousands of years of common sense. If people have to be forced to go along with a change then it likely should not be changed. Like most people, I just want to be left alone, to make my own way, and not be scrutinized, subjected to needless rules, or have the rights I was born with whittled away. This was all so very much easier before the network.

The internet has a

meme that the timeline has changed

. I do not know if I buy into a lot of that, but the common years given as shifts coincide with my own observations. I am not alone in how I feel. I am not alone in cheering pandemics on, or wishing for a global collapse. It will right what was wronged. I just hope I am alive to see it.