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Comment by badpun | Hacker News Reader

I grew up in Poland back then. Looking back at those photos, what is amazing is the serenity due to lack of advertising on the streets and on people's clothes. The world's visuals didn't scream at you back then (except for the occasional propagandist poster or banner, but these were not everywhere like today's advertising is).

BTW later, when I was a young teenager in Poland's nineties, already under neoliberal capitalism, I dreamt of the commercials on TV being informative and helpful instead of the brainwashing puke they were (and still are). As an Amiga fanboy, I especially dreamt of a commercial campain that would convince people of Amiga's technical strengths :) Ah, the innocent years of youth.

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As a fanboy of a different now defunct computer manufacturer from the same time period I also dreamed similarly about convincing people that my team was the right team.

It seems crazy to me now. Not because they weren't really good products for the time but because I was hitching myself to a commercial organisation with its own agenda on everything. Unless you're a share holder cheering on a commercial organisation, as I did, is silly.

If I could go back in time and speak to my younger self I'd point out that at least with FOSS you've as much right to the future of a project as anyone else. RMS really is correct on that.

I grew up in the USSR and I dreamt of Lenin because he was as ever present as advertising and Jesus put together in the US. Huge red billboards were everywhere, with quotes from or about Lenin and the party he created. When commercials appeared, they at least seemed lively and exciting.

What were the dreams about ? I don't know what it is to dream about a political figure

I remember ads you could find in computing/science magazines back in the 80s and early 90s in France, and they were all about technical specs and performance for certain use-cases. Pretty cool stuff. Now it's just colour puke and buzz-words.

>Now it's just colour puke and buzz-words.

Well said. The rot started some years earlier. See BYTE and other contemporary computer mags going downhill or shutting down, after a great run of many years, for example. Those computer mags used to have pages and pages of code listings, and text explaining the code (even though they still had ads for products, you could either ignore them, or read them as I often did, to learn about new tech, and some of the products were even good and interesting). Same thing happened with National Geographic magazine, sadly. My dad had a lifelong subscription to NatGeo gifted to him by a mentor who he lived with in the States, a friend of his father, while doing college there. We used to get the issues in India each month (when not stolen by the postal staff, which happened sometimes). As I grew up, I noticed the mag getting thinner, less pages for articles and photos, and more for ads.

Many of the articles in those earlier computer mags were really good and very educative. (I used to stand in regular new-book shops or roadside second-hand book shops in Chennai and Pune, reading such mags (to decide which ones to buy with my limited budget, by reading parts of many articles in them) until my feet hurt, and then leaving, after buying a few to read fully at home.) Ditto with the British Council Library, from where I used to invariably borrow 4 books (the limit) at a time. They had very good books by British computer book authors, on many topics and parts of the h/w and s/w stack.

I remember reading a very good article about Huffman coding with an explanation, figures and C code or pseudocode, by Jonathan Amsterdam, in a BYTE issue. BYTE used to have specials sometimes, notable ones were the issues on Smalltalk and Lisp (one each), in which articles about those subjects filled almost the entire magazine. The Ciarcia's Circuit Cellar column by Steve Ciarcia was great too, so much that I used to read it even though I did not have a background in electronics or hardware.

In fact, for some issues, BYTE's cover art by Robert Tinney became collector items.

https://www.google.co.in/search?q=byte+mag+cover+artist

DDJ (Dr. Dobb's Journal (of Computer Calisthenics and Orthodontia was the original name, IIRC) and CUJ (C User's Journal, later became C and C++ UJ), were excellent too. Many really good articles on C and C++, both on the language and algorithms for various purposes.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byte_(magazine)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dr._Dobb%27s_Journal

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C/C%2B%2B_Users_Journal

https://www.google.co.in/search?q=steve+ciarcia

https://circuitcellar.com/how-it-all-began/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Ciarcia

I miss those days, dammit.

From Ciarcia's How it all began article above:

[ While most people waited until the 8080 or 6502 to discover computing, back in 1974 I had an 8008 homebrew system running immediately after it appeared (see Photo 1). I paid $120 (converts to about $500 today) for that 8008 chip, and to this day, I remember sweating as I powered it up the first time. Would it be puff, pop, or hum? Well, it worked. ]

The parts about the subterfuge and skullduggery going on in the industry then are also interesting.

The part in Ciarcia's "How it all began" article starting with:

"During the same decade all this was going on at my end, BYTE was experiencing significant changes as well."

is also very interesting. Several paragraphs from there describe how he started his own magazine, Circuit Cellar, after BYTE changed direction.

It's weird how modern times made technology fluff... You can see how 40s US or CAN Army videos were so pragmatic yet detailed.

Haven't seen those, but can imagine, having seen roughly similar stuff from earlier.

I'm also shocked at the spirit on people's face. The ~lack of most modern things was replaced by other ways to enjoy places and times.

Well, I guess all this says is that when people aren't forced, that's what they want.

I'd rather have billboards than oppression, but maybe that's just me.

You think people want advertising? I’d say companies want advertisting, and people cannot do anything to stop it. There are some exceptions though, like cities banning outdoor advertising in historic city centres, the reason being that they’re intrusive and ugly, thus making the location less attractive for tourists. It’s a shame that a mere ugliness is not enough, it has to be linked with a financial loss - but it’s a step in the right direction IMO.

Why cant one dislike both?

Hey, you missed the huge Polonez Ad on the wall there. The socialist Poland Mercedes!

Yes, that single ad.

The most important one! I always wished to knew someone who had one so I could drive in it.

My family had it! It was not half-bad, except for poor reliability and high fuel consumpton. From what I’ve heard, it also drove terribly (top gear made entire episode about it, just to make fun of how badly the car handles).

We were still on waiting lists when we left for Germany...and came back a few years later in an old and ugly brown Toyota Tercel which was so much better ;)

Technically, it is Fiat 125. Just with different body.

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