When Computer Magazines Were Everywhere | Hacker News Reader

When Computer Magazines Were Everywhere

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57 pointsingve36 comments

One of the things I really miss about those days was the sense of optimism. We knew computers were getting more powerful, we knew they would change society, I hoped they could help make things better for people everywhere. What we got was lock-in and locked-down hardware, mass-surveillance, ad-driven content farms and the attention economy. There have been positives, but man. What a let-down.

Computers used to be fun.

IBM launched the PCjr and it was a cover story. When's the last time anybody wrote about a new desktop? I guess Apple and Framework do something interesting occasionally. Does anybody else?

Desktops are very rarely sold as complete products anymore. Basically the only market for them left is gamers who are just going to build their own from parts. Individual GPUs and etc do get articles.

The Mac mini gets quite a lot of attention considering I’ve never actually met a Mac mini user ever. Everyone picks the MacBook.

A lot of desktops are sold, but not to users. To companies.

It's not that computers like the PCjr were big deals (less than 300,000 of them were sold), it's that they were interesting. People talked about them.

Not just "we knew they were getting more powerful". We could watch it, month to month, just by reading the ads. Every month there was an ad or three for something that I had never even dreamed you could do with a computer.

The industry has been around long enough to see itself become the villain. I'm sad for those who weren't around during its "hero" days. There was something special about running code copied from magazines, meeting and "trading" with like-minded people at early user group meetings, and having your mind blown by the computers and software that emerged from the tech heterogeneity of that time.

You get what you make of it and I think your description of what we have is far too negative. You can actually get out of that oppressive world, you might not be able to use the latest hardware and may need to maintain some defence against the data parasites you describe but I'm fairly content with the situation we are in running:

- old off-lease hardware providing our services

- those services are based around free software and keep our data where we can 'see' it. No Apple-Google-Meta-Microsoft-etc accounts needed or wanted.

- older laptops, notebooks, mobile devices running free software

Content filtering takes care of the advertising and other data parasites. As to 'the attention economy' that is up to you as an individual to keep out of your life. Ditch the legacy media and you're already on the right trail, find alternatives where needed and you'll be fine.

If some product is locked down you just have to refrain from using it no matter how enticing it looks, no matter how slick the advertising, no matter how heavy the group pressure. You may have to live with your text messages showing up in a different colour on the screens of those who drank the Kool-Aid, you may have to insist on using a different communication channel than the one pushed by FaceMetabook, etc.

In short there is still a bright future for those who know how coax it from the materials at hand, you'll just have to fight the parasites who always appear in thriving ecosystems. Squash them like the bugs they are and you'll be fine unless you happen to live somewhere where the state uses repressive means to keep everyone and everything under its control. If this is the case you can try to fight it, especially while they have not achieved full control and there is still a chance of turning the ship around. If not you're probably best off by moving out of that state, the world is a big place and there's likely to be some country where your skills are welcomed.

I think the biggest difference is, in the past, technology felt "enabling" and now it feels "predatory"

Another view: in the past, when you started using a new technology, you wanted to explore it and find new ways to use it. Now, when you start using a new technology, you need to tiptoe around it and/or find ways to disable it.

Again this depends on the technology and, even more important, on the decision to even start using that technology. When confronted with some 'new technology you need to tiptoe around [...] and/or find ways to disable [...]' the decision should be to not use that technology. Home speakers, cloud-connected everything, data parasite owned doorbells, payment systems run by the same - don't use them. If you really want a 'home speaker' make one yourself, it won't be much worse than whatever you get when you allow one of those data parasite-produced spies into your home. Don't put a camera an microphone at your door which sends all images and sounds directly to the cloud,if you want a camera at your door make sure it only sends images to a network and storage you control.

Data technology has gone mainstream and with that it is used by adversarial actors, this was much less the case in the time of yore. There was no 'big data' because the storage and processing capacity to enable it did not exist while nowadays it is available to anyone who has the means - and those means are steadily going down. In biological terms data technology used to be a niche which was found by a group of critters which happily lived in their secluded valley until it suddenly spread over the whole world. With that came new opportunities - jobs galore for anyone who knew his way around - but also new threats, predators and parasites. That is where we are now so the name of the game is survival of the fittest. In other words, up your ante, ditch parasite technology and learn to thrive again. You'll have to swat some buzzing parasite every now and then, both the winged as well the branded variety. Situation Normal, All Fucked Up.

I appreciate my elders' experience, but do note that contemporary AI researchers and enthusiasts often feel similarly about AI advancements:

We watch AI models become better each month, not in ads, but in blogs and posts. While not making cover stories, new models do make the news. I was so excited when Dall-E first came out, I even hosted a guess-the-prompt party four years ago with what seems now like prehistoric-level generated images. The AI industry may face more scrutiny and criticism than the computer hardware industry of the olden days, but we even have a semblance of open source communities who are trying to democratize this for everyone.

All this to say, similar sentiments still exist in the frontier, it's just that the frontier moved.

In the 80s and 90s, most of the enthusiasm I saw was from nerds who just wanted to make cool stuff and share it with people. It felt like magic to make computers do things.

Much (but not all) of the enthusiasm I see with AI today seems to be from people who think it will make them rich, powerful, and freed from the apparently intolerable burden of having to interact with other humans in order to generate and consume media.

It's not the same.

I agree with the earlier part of your comment, but am not clear about this part:

>and freed from the apparently intolerable burden of having to interact with other humans in order to generate and consume media.

Can you explain it?

Things like:

* A comment I saw on HN once where some dude was excited about AI video because it let him play at being a filmmaker without having to deal with actors, camera operators, etc.

* The large number of tragic souls who install chatbot apps on their phones and have virtual relationships with them instead of actual relationships.

* Spending an evening scrolling through TikTok or other social media which is increasingly AI-generated images and video instead of summoning the willpower to call a friend or get out of the house.

* Music producers who use AI vocal generators instead of finding a friend who can sing.

Etc.

got it, thanks. interesting.

I've seen things like that too, among my friends and acquaintances.

e.g.: a few months back, i was hanging out one evening in the office of a friend who works in the filmmaking field, who i saw creating a presentation to promote an upcoming film course they were going to conduct shortly.

i somehow could detect, by the words and tone, that it was probably ai-generated. he said yes.

then i told him what i intuitively felt, that using such a tool once in a while may be okay but if you use it a lot, your skills will atrophy.

same thing happened with another friend in a different field some days later.

There are a lot of nerds out there who just want to do cool things with AI and share it with people. They're just incredibly outshouted by the people who want to get rich off AI. One of the big problems with the modern internet is that the person trying to make money off something is always going to put far more effort into self-promoting than the person doing something interesting.

I definitely enjoyed the phase of AI stuff where it wasn't actually useful yet more than the current one.

We once envisioned a future of greater connection, with information flowing freely and accessible to all. The irony is that we've instead created a fragmented society where misinformation and scams flourish.

Back in 1975, my dad got a copy of Creative Computing magazine from a colleague, and gave it to me as he knew I talked about computers. I was in heaven reading that mag. I still have it.

In the 80s, I regularly went to B&N to troll the computer mags. They're all gone now.

My hot rod magazines have all disappeared, too. Magazines like "Chrysler Engines". Sigh. The only one left is Hot Rod.

I still subscribe to Linux and Admin magazines, and look forward to getting them. They are nostalgic while still filled with genuinely useful information. There is something categorically different in the experience of sitting down and reading curated articles vs consuming an endless stream of updates. Both are worthwhile, and I’m glad both are options.

Plus, it’s a rare win/win of indulgence and plausible productivity.

https://www.linux-magazine.com/

I recently bought an electronics magazine for the first time in many years. Initially I flicked through and considered the articles in it kind of boring. But I think it’s just the absolute oversaturation of attention grabbing content online frying my brain.

The fact that you just have to read these medium form articles since that’s all there is for the month kind of resets your brain from just flicking through a million YouTube shorts.

Despite being Gen Z, our house wasn’t hooked up to the internet for most of my childhood and I remember spending ages analysing every single detail in the magazines I got. While now I have to actively avoid getting distracted and pulling out my phone.

I grew up pre-internet in the middle of nowhere, more than a mile from the nearest neighbor and 20 miles from anything you could call a town. and we had a somewhat oddball home computer that noone else had at school. Computer magazines were literally my only source of information for my system. I remember checking the mailbox every day and then spending hours reading every word in each new issue. typing in programs, dreaming of owning the fancy upgrades and new hardware.

I love being able to access almost anything instantly, but it kind of reduces my appreciation of everything at the same time

From Wikipedia <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PCMag>:

>By its third issue PC was square-bound, because it was too thick for saddle-stitch. At first the magazine published new issues every two months, but became monthly as of the August 1982 issue, its fourth. In March 1983 a reader urged the magazine to consider switching to a biweekly schedule because of its thickness. Although the magazine replied to the reader's proposal with "Please say you're kidding about the bi-weekly schedule. Please?", after the December 1983 issue reached 800 pages in size, in 1984 PC began publishing new issues every two weeks, with each about 400 pages in size.

I don't believe BYTE ever reached 800 pages, but it came close. The only other computer magazine I know of that reached >400 pages per issue is ... 80 Micro, in 1982 and a special issue in 1983.[1] The magazine folded in 1988, which tells you just how quickly the TRS-80 market collapsed once the IBM PC (as represented by PC) got going.

[1] The special issue has an editorial titled "There's no end in sight". <https://archive.org/details/80-microcomputing-magazine-1983-...>

I miss the days of eagerly picking up the latest PCFormat from the cornershop. The guides, the reviews, but mostly the CD running some old Macromedia Shockwave/HTML website with random apps and tools I could never download in the few minutes a day of dial-up time. Wish I’d kept some of my favourite issues.

I remember the ‘90s fondly in this regard. 1000 pages issue of Computer Shopper, the early days of Wired, and so much variety of publications. But especially because after work I wrote dozens of articles for Software Development Magazine and even judged the Jolt Awards a few years.

> Today I almost certainly have more retro computer magazines than you do. By my count, I now have nearly 700 issues of various computer magazines from the 70s, 80s and 90s!

I have nearly 200 issues just of PC Magazine. If I toted up the rest, I might have more than you!

I miss those free CD-ROMS on the cover. I consumed so much software in the 1990s that way. I swear I've played the Tomb Raider 2 demo for hours without ever having rented or owned the actual game.

I love the comments today. I share many of the feelings described here. The question is... can we get that back without time travel?

I'm a technology enthusiast but haven't been blown away by any new hardware in a while.

I wondered if this was age-related, but my kid and his friends don't seem to be too excited either. In fact, he's now into mechanical analog watches and even grabbed my wife's Swatch which she hasn't used in over 10 years!

In the 80’s I lived in SE Pennsylvania. In the King of Prussia Mall was Gene’s Books. They had ALL the titles. I worked for a tech company that wanted people to learn things. I wrangled $300 per month budget and a small office that we turned into a tech library. Gene’s was a regular bi-weekly stop to get the lates editions. Computer Shopper was the only magazine that we got 3 of every month.

OP had a commitment to preserving history. Well done.

But no “Nibble”? That was my go to mag for Apple programming. I wish I had saved them like OP!

I always enjoyed Softline - the irreverent sibling to Softalk.

As I am a hoarder, you're better off not having saved them!

I fondly remember when Wired magazine was almost all tech articles, instead of 50% advertisements, and 40% paid content.

I think Mondo 2000 is the spiritual predecessor of Wired. So much weird stuff in there. I used to flip through articles about smart drugs wondering if they really worked. The caveat was always that the long term consequences aren't known.

Well, there could be a cohort of Mondo readers who have been on them for the past 40 years. They might be able to say if there have been long term consequences.

When was that? The first issue? By 1994 they'd made it over 50% ads. A randomly chosen sample if you want to refamiliarize yourself with just how many ads magazines had back then: https://archive.org/details/wired-magazine-02.10-1994-octobe...

My father subscribed to monthly computer magazine almost 40 years ago. As a teenager, it was very exciting to unwrap and find out new things to learn every month.

These days I'm so burn out when newsletter or social media site feed me with daily new Javascript frameworks.

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