I’ve noticed lately that many of the people I talk to who work with computers have become a nostalgic lot. We’re all getting older. We speak fondly of our first Apple, lovingly recall reading our first issue of PC Magazine or PC Computing and chortle at the memory of attending some computer event where some now-bygone industry luminary was blind to his own company’s future downfall.

I’ve learned about a website for people like us: Old-Computers.com. You can read up on practically any ancient computer that ever existed and watch a 75-minute demo — perhaps the first ever recorded — given by Doug Engelbert and other researchers at Stanford in 1968 showing how computers could share information. (You’ll recognize such concepts as the mouse, hyperlink and email.)

Are you old enough to remember the Kaypro? I lugged one around in the mid-80s, thinking I was really cutting edge with my portable. (It had the heft of a sewing machine.)

Young people don’t talk about their first computer. The computing machines themselves are irrelevant. It’s all about the services they use. But you watch. Someday they’ll get that same  dreamy tone in their voices when they remember their first iPod or cellphone.

Posted on April 27th, 2008 by dian