As I struggle with trying to update a video embedding plugin on a blog it doesn’t hurt to keep in mind what it used to be like, not so long ago. Although I wasn’t into the technical details back then, I remember using a Mac Classic and text-catting with a friend on the other side of the desk. And the TI-99/4A with its awesome application cartridges, the Commodore and Vic 20 churning away to save files on tape that I had typed in from a magazine (peek, poke) so I could play a game. Or the first time I used QEMM and Desqview and could switch between multiple applications– Sidekick and Lotus Symphony, I think… with 16 colors! And all the hours I spent on a VAX terminal, writing papers in LaTeX with TPU and processing them for the one laser printer on campus, a hugely expensive monstrosity guarded carefully by the “nodies” who ran the “computer node” aka lab.
The whole conceptual shift from using applications to “being online” has been so fundamental and overpowering– coloring everything we do– that it’s hard to remember that crazy computing land before time, all of 15 years ago.