When mentioning by random to someone that I am interested about retrocomputing and old computers, a typical reaction is: "Why?" Personally I might get a similar reaction if someone tells being interested about fashion or modern pop music, so I understand it is hard to understand if someone is interested about something that dwells outside your own bubble. Nevertheless, while collecting old art or antique furniture is often represented as a high-class hobby and people who deal with vintage cars are rather frequently appearing in traditional media, but within IT field it often is endorsed that only the most recent technology matters.
To make straight things indirect, I'll jump back by theoretizing that a human being has basically three types of secondary desires (aka needs not essential for staying alive): rational, emotional and spiritual. On my part, dealing with retrocomputing supports all those three fields.
The way I see it, spiritual side seems to be actually the most common factor as a reason for people to get indulged with old computers and video games. On another word: nostalgia. Many people might be prone to classify nostalgia into field of emotional side, but even while nostalgia surely fondles our feelings, I tend to think that such connection to the past should rather deemed as a connection to the spiritual side of being - had you not had a place for such things in your spirit, it would not touch your emotions either. A scene of a movie might touch you regardless whether you'd seen it as a kid before, but another scene might awaken your soul only because you have experienced it so long time ago.
Similarly indeed, there is some retrieval of the past with finally finishing an adventure game Zak McKracken that was too hard for you as a kid or getting to hear intro of Defender of the Crown after a quarter century. Will it last though, likely no, and in some situations it can even lead to disillusions and disappointment - the best game of your childhood might actually suck nowadays and a certain path of thinking leads to noting how futile and vanishing everything that once mattered is. Let us not go into that though, and actually for me nostalgia is not really the decisive factor with old stuff: in fact I'm exploring more of the stuff I never even knew about as a kid. I think nostalgia is more of repetition or revision of the previously experienced, and I'm more into venturing into wastelands where no Sakari has gone before.
As rational motives I can suggest both practical and cognitive reasons. For practical reasons it could be argued that there is a lot of stuff gone past, and even if (at least some of the) new stuff would be better, the human beings are still the same as actually thousands of years ago. So if something was fun two decades ago, it can be so still today. Yes, not every old game feels very fun nowadays, but to be honest, many of them were really played for a moment already back then (except if you had bought a bad game for high price and would have been too embarrassing to just let it rot untouched) and many games nowadays are likewise played only for a moment before moving to the next one.
So I do surely claim that there are many pearls worth playing also today - for instance "Gold Box" Advanced Dungeons & Dragons series of 1980's, Lucas/Sierra adventure games or various Sid Meier's games like Pirates! and Sword of the Samurai I would easily enjoy playing still for several hours should I meet them today. Of course since I have already spent countless of hours on those games and many games lack replay value, I don't play them as much anymore, but there are still lots of good games unknown to me. Good old games can be easier to obtain for less money than new games, although for some parts the golden age of abandonware seems already gone and despite the illusion of "everything is in Internet" many old things are actually really hard to come by.
Similar logic goes to hardware - older can be found cheaper than new ones - but there it is way less clear. Software can be run with emulators that often are providing not only really authentic reproduction of the system in non-physical sense but also can actually be more compatible than the original devices. If you'd like to play all DOS games properly, you might need say three different hardware setups, yet you need but one DOSBox to rule them all. On the other hand, and this is more or less already part of the emotional reasoning as well as was the idea of old good games being still enjoyable, the experience with a real vintage device is more rewarding in sort of irrational fashion. Just like when you actually drive that decades old car, playing an old game with similarly old computer just feels more special and true - human beings have analogue senses, and digital world is just not the same.
That is, assuming the device actually works. Then again a major part of the enjoyment is actually getting the old systems back in running. Also with later knowledge and reduction in demand, it is possible to get such systems that would have been simply impossible to afford back then. CD-ROM would've been luxury in 1990 and not many people would've afforded two monitors for Commodore 128, let alone having flash drives or other modern add-in systems. Downside with physical devices is obviously that they take space. Your partner might be not too eager to let you have half dozen CRT monitors and a full dozen of old metal boxes in your shared living room.
Ironically the old being more affordable is not a very durable argument either. Most electronic systems seem to be at their cheapest at around age of 10 years, when they are inevitably obsolete for modern use and people are forced to renew them, and everyone else also already have the same or want something newer as well. However, during that phase many of the devices are thrown away because they're already broken - or just because they're old. So availability starts to reduce and nostalgia troll starts to rise its head after people get older, and for the few remaining devices there are people are willing to pay again, yet the demand is not big enough for actual reproduction to start up.
For returning yet to the rational cognitive side, at least for my part dealing with old computers is learning as well. Despite how constantly it is being told that if your IT field knowledge is from beyond 5 years, you're useless in the professional field, most of the basics of the computer systems and programming from the micro stone age are still perfectly valid today. Modern systems just have a lot more layers in between the user and the hardware, which is also what makes modern computers more dull and difficult: you could make a temperature meter application for C64 out of the box with few lines of code and couple components, but in order to make the same on any modern computer you might end up needing more code than would even fit to that poor old 8-bit computer - not to mention about getting the component side working. Yet in the depth of the core it's still about running bits - ones and zeros - with astonishing speed. If you know your history, you will understand the present better, and then you can also see more accurately what might come tomorrow.
To summarize on three arguments my answer on the question, why do I like retrocomputing: I find it interesting and educating (rational), I enjoy doing it (emotional) and I find connections to worlds unseen (spiritual). Or in a nutshell, I find it human to retrocompute.
No comments:
Post a Comment