Computers Are More Fun Now
Someone who I find generally insightful about computers, especially about their history, evolution, and the position of modern computing in relation to that, shared this article: Honest and Elitist Thoughts on Why Computers Were More Fun Before(archive). I get the overall point this article is trying to make, and a lot of its individual points resonate with me, but I think it’s fundamentally wrong… or at least missing something important.
I’ll admit the “honest and elitist” framing sent up at least a yellow flag to start; it’s the same “I’m just being honest” framing that’s used to excuse all sorts of nasty things. “Everyone’s thinking it, I’m just the only one saying it” or whatever, even when (as in this article) that’s only implied, never stated. This is a milder version of that, but it wasn’t a great framing anyway.
But before I go into the article for real, a semi-diversion about my parents.
Mom and Dad and Computers
My mom was not an unintelligent woman. She had a long career as a teacher; the bulk of it as a reading specialist, especially working with ESL (English as a Second Language) students. She had a Masters in education and was working on her PhD, getting All But Dissertation before leaving the program to put more time into raising me and my sister. And yet for most of my life, she wouldn’t touch a computer. They were too intimidating. I tried helping her learn how to do what she wanted to do, but it was never terribly productive. When she first starting thinking about re-starting a PhD program, a portion of the coursework in the program she picked was online. She gave it a good shot, certainly moreso than she ever previously had. But I grew up in a Windows-using house, and this was mostly a disaster. That system was way too easy to break (and she did). Every time something went wrong, it only strengthened the intimidation she’d felt going in. She never said so, but I’m pretty sure that contributed to her dropping out of that program.
My dad always had a greater affinity for computers, but no greater aptitude. He used his computer lots… and broke it lots. I’d fix it when I came to visit. He’d set the wrong setting, click the wrong link, and by the next time I came to visit it’d be unusable again. Eventually I got fed up and told him I wouldn’t do Windows support any more, but if he bought a Mac I’d help him with whatever he needed. He got an iMac running Mac OS X and it was great. There was a learning curve, but smaller than I’d anticipated. He’d still get himself into a weird state once in a while (mostly about not being able to find a window or program), but the thing was never broken. My support burden dropped to maybe 1/10th of what it had been, and he was both more successful in what he was trying to do and less frustrated while doing it. He found it more fun.
After my dad’s success with the Mac, I tried to get my mom to give it a shot. I think she gave it an honest try, as best she could, but the intimidation was too firmly set at that point. She’d hold the mouse like she was afraid of it; she’d often have this look of deep concern while using it, like it was just a matter of time until it broke… and she’d feel like it was her fault. Again. She never got the thing into a bad state, there were never any real problems, it really did just come down to “computer == scary”. She wanted to be able to do things with it, but it looked like it was physically painful for her to use it. I didn’t push it long, and she just stopped using a computer for years.
Then, on a whim, I gave her my 2-generation-old iPad. After the experience with the Mac I wasn’t really expecting much, but I’d heard enough success stories about non-computery people using the thing that it seemed worth a shot. And wow was it ever. I don’t know whether it was the direct manipulation model, the simplicity of the UI, the engineering that went in under the surface, or, as likely as not, just the fact that it was smaller, but for whatever combination of reasons it triggered (almost) none of her insecurities about using a computer. She never did anything complex with it—her usage was probably 70% Safari, 20% Mail, and 10% Facetime (and only when my sister or I initiated the call)—but she was successful in the things she was trying to use it for. I’d check it out when I came to visit and there were certainly oddities— I’m not sure she ever closed a Safari tab, and she’d drop into private browsing mode by accident—but they never mattered. The thing never broke. It accommodated her weird usage and just kept going. She was able to accomplish what she was trying to do, and she had fun doing it.
Better for whom?
So my first question, the same I encourage everyone to ask any time you see an argument claiming things were better “before”, is: better for whom? For both my parents, computers got more fun as they got closer to today. Their experience is not an outlier. I’m confident there are many millions of people who would disagree with what this article is asserting. Because the author doesn’t say “I had more fun with computers before”, which would be entirely unassailable. They say “computers were more fun”, which is a categorical statement. And a trivially provably false one.
But! Like I said up front, a lot of this resonates with me. I enjoy a lot of the same things about the older model of computing that this author does. Some of those are “just” aesthetics and taste (which are fine and valid reasons!), while some approach philosophical stances about how people should be in control of their tools. I get it. But here’s the thing: we haven’t lost nearly as much of this as the author claims. At least, not really.
The Past Never Went Anywhere
This might be the most concrete thing I think the author’s missing: you can still get most of the experience they’re claiming used to be better.
“Get back to where you once belonged.”
First of all, the actual old computers are still out there. Early on, the author says:
You could learn a piece of software and keep using it for as long as a decade without experiencing any major overhauls.
That’s true. But also… why’d you stop? Why only a decade? Especially since one of their other points is that old computers were (at least primarily) offline, you can just keep using the same thing.
About a year ago, I picked up two old Sun SPARCstations. I love these things. My first “real” unix system was a SPARCstation, and it’s still what I think of when I hear “workstation”. I got them to poke around with, partly for the nostalgia of re-creating my environment from back then, but more to try some of the things I missed out on, having been very young and inexperienced at the time (namely, they run both OpenStep and the 2nd Edition of Plan 9). You can get old systems like this in most places just fine. And for a lot of them, they’re not even that expensive; I think mine were about $120 each. That’s not nothing, but the original price is probably 50x that, and it’s much cheaper than any modern computer you can buy. You want the old thing, keep using the old thing! Except that’s not really what folks making this argument want. But let’s put a pin in that for a minute.
“The past is never dead. It’s not even past.”
Antiquarian efforts aside, you can still get a lot of what the author’s after using modern stuff. On the software side, especially, there are very modern systems that will allow every bit of this. You can still run modern unix-like systems the same was you used to, sans graphics, networking, or whatever else you’d like to omit. I’m not a fan of the direction linux has gone one some relevant points here, but… just don’t run that. The BSDs all look much more like the unix systems of old (which is itself a mixed bag, but one I think is a net win). And there’s more obscure option that are still just as available to you. I run Plan 9 on both servers and my main workstation (even if it’s not the correct pizzabox form factor from the SPARCstations), which gives every bit of this control. And requires it, in ways the author (and I!) seem to enjoy.
I grant that the picture with hardware is a little different. Things like the Management Engine—and especially the so-called Trusted Platform Module—in modern PCs do mean their end users have less control over the system than you used to. But there’s still a large spectrum of options here. The author mentions the Raspberry Pi, which avoids most of these issues, although does have the noted closed GPU firmly integrated into the system. That matters a less, but is still real (personally, I still really like the Raspberry Pi on this score because it’s the first system I’ve had that made GPIO, I²C, and such this accessible, which feels like a big win on closely related points). There are RISC-V systems, and less mainstream ARM systems, which are even better on these points. The issue here seems not to be that these systems don’t exist, can’t be found, or can’t be built. It’s feels like the issue is that they’re not all this way. Put this on that same pin for now.
“The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there.”
Modern, mainstream systems are also amazing. Yes, there are complicated tradeoffs in making these systems, but the MacBook I’m typing this on has the best screen I’ve ever used, a battery that seems to last forever, a processor that can compile anything I throw at it in seconds, and storage for my entire music and photo collection. Some of the software is great—both useful and fun.
There’s also a lot of points that are frustrating. Unix has felt overly-complicated since I got used to Plan 9, and macOS’s launchd and plist files make that worse in a lot of ways. Even within the macOS model, it’s reasonable to be concerned about how Apple changes things, both with regards to specifics (everyone has their “last good version”; for me, macOS 11 was the first uniform disappointment, exemplified by hiding the proxy icon) and the simple fact that changing between versions is disruptive on its own. So I split my time roughly equally between macOS, iOS, and Plan 9. Plan 9 feels the most comfortable for the things it does, certainly feels the most comprehensible, malleable, predictable. It feels like how I want computers to feel, a lot of which maps directly to what the article’s author is gravitating towards.
It also doesn’t (meaningfully) have a web browser.
So: back to that pin. Why don’t we just keep using the 40-year-old hardware and software? Why don’t we just pick a close-enough platform and put software on it that feels like the old days? It’s because we want what the new things offer. I enjoy using Plan 9, but I’m not hoping to watch Netflix on it any time soon. Apple’s Numbers is, in a lot of meaningful, important ways, better than VisiCalc—more functional, more fun. And all the beautiful, weird, bizarre art people make on the web— the modern web—are never going to be accessible to my SPARCstations. We want the new things… we just want them built like the old things.
One Size Fits Few
I had a discussion with a friend a few years ago where he was ranting (and I do not mean that pejoratively) against iOS. He was concerned about a future where people couldn’t tinker with, inspect, and control their computers. He found it unacceptable that Apple would promote a future of computing based on iOS with those sorts of constraints built in; a future, as he saw it, where people didn’t have the option to dig in. And I get the concern. I don’t want that future, either. But also… the Mac continues to exist. You can still run arbitrary software there (and no, Gatekeeper is not a counterexample). I think it’s important—in a deep, philosophical sense—that true general purpose computers continue to exist and be practical, accessible options for people. Not just because sometimes geeks like me will want to tinker, but because that freedom is important. But the fact that additional thing which operate more like appliances also exist doesn’t represent any sort of challenge to that.
It doesn’t take anything away from my use of Plan 9 on old, weird PowerPC hardware that my mom can use her iPad. Or that I can use my iPad. For sure, I know I’d find the iPad more fun (and useful) if I could side-load arbitrary software and load some equivalent of LaunchDaemons. But I’m also pretty confident that device would’ve been less fun for my mom.
Maybe the author genuinely found computers more fun back then; that’s a personal preference, and I’ve not no criticism for that. But to say that computers simply were, inherently more fun you have to assert that the millions of people who find the modern versions more fun are wrong.
I spend my computer fun time on systems that (mostly) don’t frustrate me, and I opt out of things which take the fun out of it for me (hi, linux). I have access to amazing things like a $35 computer with fun IO options, retro systems I never would have been able to afford new, and, perhaps most importantly, an internet full of people also doing fun things with computers.
I’m having more fun with computers than ever.