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Retro paradox?

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First post, by Jo22

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Hello everyone.

Isn't it strange how the further we diverge from the past,
the more our knowledge increases about the past?

I'm thinking about this phenomenon for a while.
I think I heard about in on the web once, too.
It's not just nostalgia or pop culture, no.

Instead of slowly forgetting about details of, say, tube technology or old computers,
todays knowledge of the old, it seems, actually steadily increases with temporal distance.

I think that's neat, but how/why is that so?
There are likely less people that deal with older technology now
than in the old days when said technology was current.

Comments welcome! ^^

Best regards,
Jo22

"Time, it seems, doesn't flow. For some it's fast, for some it's slow.
In what to one race is no time at all, another race can rise and fall..." - The Minstrel

//My video channel//

Reply 1 of 53, by Unknown_K

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I think quite a bit of knowledge is actually lost over time. Some people tend to spend a bit of time and effort trying to learn it over again and with the internet those people are just easier to find.

Collector of old computers, hardware, and software

Reply 3 of 53, by Caluser2000

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ON=sparks

OFF=no sparks

There's a glitch in the matrix.
A founding member of the 286 appreciation society.
Apparently 32-bit is dead and nobody likes P4s.
Of course, as always, I'm open to correction...😉

Reply 4 of 53, by RandomStranger

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I disagree. Today only enthusiasts deal with old tech so their/our average knowledge about it will be high, because it's our hobby to accumulate that knowledge. Back then the everymen was the average user who didn't care about the tech they used than they do now with modern tech. But there were also experts and enthusiasts back then who knew as much if not more than today's enthusiasts. Most of our knowledge is rediscovery by either reading it up or experimenting.

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Reply 5 of 53, by Jo22

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Oh, okay. I was always under the impression that early computer users in general had a better understanding of the basics than nowadays users. 😀

Users of C64, Amiga etc. I thought, all had a certain amount of base knowledge in programming,
about the inner low-level function of the computer and knew how to use a soldering iron.

But despite this, information available in books, magazines or the early online services, BBSes etc. seemed not as comprehensive as it seems now?

"Time, it seems, doesn't flow. For some it's fast, for some it's slow.
In what to one race is no time at all, another race can rise and fall..." - The Minstrel

//My video channel//

Reply 6 of 53, by appiah4

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Jo22 wrote on 2021-07-26, 05:20:
Hello everyone. […]
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Hello everyone.

Isn't it strange how the further we diverge from the past,
the more our knowledge increases about the past?

I'm thinking about this phenomenon for a while.
I think I heard about in on the web once, too.
It's not just nostalgia or pop culture, no.

Instead of slowly forgetting about details of, say, tube technology or old computers,
todays knowledge of the old, it seems, actually steadily increases with temporal distance.

I think that's neat, but how/why is that so?
There are likely less people that deal with older technology now
than in the old days when said technology was current.

Comments welcome! ^^

Best regards,
Jo22

Time allows for compiling and documenting collective experience and technology makes accessing it easier, that is all in my opinion.

Retronautics: A digital gallery of my retro computers, hardware and projects.

Reply 7 of 53, by gerry

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the knowledge of back then is slowly developed further over the years and for many technical things it isn't lost but becomes deeper such that the total documented knowledge is more now than back then

however the number of people who do things with the available knowledge becomes less,

Reply 8 of 53, by ncmark

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Well...in the "old days" you DID have to know more about inner workings. Code WAS tighter because it HAD to be. But now....development time seems to be most important. Which is how we got to where we need a quad-core computer with 4 gigabytes of RAM to open a text file 😉

Reply 9 of 53, by ncmark

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Since C64 was mentioned in a previous message, I'll mention something I have pondered over the years. I would argue that when the C64 came out, it could do more and was a better buy than the PCs of the era (XT).
BUT then think about how primitive it really was. It couldn't even do something like display a picture in even 256 color mode - the graphics subsystem just wasn't there
AND it was only 40 column! I remember moving to an XT that had a CGA card and monitor and I was completely blown away by the quality (of text at least) - no comparison for something like word processing

But (more on topic) ...that thing taught me a LOT about programming. You could forget about basic - at least for doing anything performance-related. I had got pretty good at assembly. THAT kind of programming knowledge is rapidly being lost.

Reply 10 of 53, by SteveC

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I think that also it's down to 30+ years or so ago much of the tech seemed like magic and beyond comprehension but now looking back, much of it is more understandable for many people as it was way simpler technology. However it is just mind-blowing how the developers of the time though were able to ingeniously use the scarce resources they had.

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Reply 11 of 53, by Caluser2000

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Jo22 wrote on 2021-07-26, 06:36:
Oh, okay. I was always under the impression that early computer users in general had a better understanding of the basics than n […]
Show full quote

Oh, okay. I was always under the impression that early computer users in general had a better understanding of the basics than nowadays users. 😀

Users of C64, Amiga etc. I thought, all had a certain amount of base knowledge in programming,
about the inner low-level function of the computer and knew how to use a soldering iron.

But despite this, information available in books, or the early online services, BBSes etc. seemed not as comprehensive as it seems now?

Nope, not at all. Our kids just used C64s to play gamez with their mates.

There's a glitch in the matrix.
A founding member of the 286 appreciation society.
Apparently 32-bit is dead and nobody likes P4s.
Of course, as always, I'm open to correction...😉

Reply 12 of 53, by The Serpent Rider

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Instead of slowly forgetting about details of, say, tube technology or old computers,
todays knowledge of the old, it seems, actually steadily increases with temporal distance.

There's no paradox. You just had more time and interest to study the subject.

I must be some kind of standard: the anonymous gangbanger of the 21st century.

Reply 13 of 53, by SteveC

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The Serpent Rider wrote on 2021-07-26, 11:58:

Instead of slowly forgetting about details of, say, tube technology or old computers,
todays knowledge of the old, it seems, actually steadily increases with temporal distance.

There's no paradox. You just had more time and interest to study the subject.

And you can easily find out so much now. Back in 1990 you'd be restricted to magazines and newsletters or working things out yourself.

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/StevesTechShed
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Reply 14 of 53, by The Serpent Rider

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Indeed. The internet accumulated knowledge makes it much easier. Stuff like 8088-486 isn't that scary now for a newbie.

I must be some kind of standard: the anonymous gangbanger of the 21st century.

Reply 15 of 53, by BitWrangler

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There's information gaps for various reasons IMO, libraries had lots of material on 1980s computers, many books were written .... annnd threw it all out in the late 90s... Same with the 1990s there were a lot of books, but they were retired as out of date only 5 years after they were on the shelves. Books actually seemed to be a poor info source where computers were concerned when everything seemed to be accelerating from the mid 90s, because by the time it was printed it was out of date. However, the internet took over for hardware info, beginning on newsgroups, exploding onto the web from 1995, and where is that info??? Well not much stuff pre 2000 got archived very well, only the biggest sites etc, by archive.org, because storage was super expensive still and they just didn't have the space. There were long running sites that got wiped out by such things as AOL hometown, and many other large ISPs discontinuing user homepages, the closure of geocities and other services. Archive.org may have got some of them. Then the newsgroup stuff is patchy and uncurated, and while dejanews archive was going it was indeed possible to find posts from way back into late 80s about computer hardware, but google seems to have indexed it all really poorly and hardly ever brings stuff up in normal searches, and makes it hard to search independently. Now there's information black holes like facebook that make past info hard to retrieve for many hobby subjects. Blogs are semi-awful also in the way that they make users add to a time line rather than add to a subject category.

Anyway, what has happened a lot is that "upgrades" in the info presentation have meant that only current stuff is discussed on that platform and almost nobody brings in the old stuff. Around about the turn of the millennium there were a lot of forum upgrades to vbulletin and similar and sysops just flat out deleted the old content in many cases, or maybe they've got a tape they always meant to figure out how to convert. Many hardware pages such as Sysopt and HardOCP are a lot different than they used to be and all their old content lost, apart from what you can dig up in waybackmachine and that is a bit patchy pre 2005ish. The newsgroup stuff never carried over to the web, there was a bit of a diversion along the way where you could find a lot of useful text files and archived "good" posts, stuff culled from diallup support BBSes, on gopher and ftp servers, with interfaces like Archie to help find them, but that again had a limited scope, probably 92 to 95 stuff, then all the servers were getting turned off and not much made it to the web again.

So yeah, we seem SOOOO much smarter these days, we keep deleting the evidence that people had a clue more than 5 years ago.

Edit: some shout outs and a round of applause for hardware sites that have maintained their old pages, well the pictures are lacking in many instances, but the text is there at least... arstechnica, anandtech, overclockers, tom's hardware .... probably quite a few others, and these guys mostly existed from late 90s, not sure there's anything a little earlier.

Unicorn herding operations are proceeding, but all the totes of hens teeth and barrels of rocking horse poop give them plenty of hiding spots.

Reply 16 of 53, by The Serpent Rider

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Edit: some shout outs and a round of applause for hardware sites that have maintained their old pages

Many of those were poisoned by time-ticking bomb called Flash. Graph images in flash... what were they thinking?!

I must be some kind of standard: the anonymous gangbanger of the 21st century.

Reply 17 of 53, by leileilol

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Flash was used as a SVG/WMF substitute in a similar manner Java (not script) was for animated headers. Windows 9X (at least starting in late 97) bundled both a version of a Flash plugin and a Java VM so it was seen pretty normalized at one point in time. The security boogeyman were just visual basic scripts sent in emails.

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Reply 19 of 53, by Jo22

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Thanks everyone so far for the feedback! 😀

I think hover, that there's a little misunderstanding.

So far, some of you rather had a negative opinion.

What I was wondering, at the very heart, was :
Why is knowledge of the past steadily increasing, rather than decreasing?
Normally, some would should expect the latter rather.

Just think of the MT-32, the Innovation Sound Standard sound card etc.

In the last 10, 15 years I learned about so much stuff that I haven't even heard in the 90s.
And I had been there! 😀

Also, I won't buy that "there's the internet now" thing.
That's way too simple.

The internet and the internet archive had been around since the 90s.
And as far as internet access is concerned, the early 2000s were no different from what we have now.

Also, mailboxes (BBSes) and online services like CompuServe were around even earlier,
with their roots dating back to the 70s.

My father, if memory served, had an X.25 access that allowed him to access databases all around the world in the late 70s/early 80s, already.
But even then, the information available about 70s era technology was lesser than its today.

So if all was a just geek-thing, then why did they had less information on their finger tips back then,
than the average person has now?

I mean, they literally worked with said technology when it was current.
These early geeks/users sat at the source, essentially.
Early online-services and BBSes were all about the current stuff (of their time).

Or in other words: Technology/services of the past were meant to provide
information about technology of the same past.

Yet, today's people still have some how access to a lot of vintage information.
Despite the fact that this information has (almost) no practical use anymore.

And in a few years, maybe, even more information of the past is being unrevealed?
Maybe we will read of early computer prototypes and inventors we have never ever heard before yet?

Sorry for my poor English, but that's what I was referring to.
The history books seem to be getting more and more complete as time wents on.

Someone should think that things are getting forgotten rather as time passes,
but the situation is much more positive than it should.
Human beings do an extraordinary good job at preserving and keeping things together. 😃👍

"Time, it seems, doesn't flow. For some it's fast, for some it's slow.
In what to one race is no time at all, another race can rise and fall..." - The Minstrel

//My video channel//