But tonight is not All Hallows Eve. And it's Frivolous Friday to boot, so I'm memorializing the bits of geekhood that have been lost to me in the stampede to our information auto-firehosing, there's-an-app.-for-that, hyper-friended present.
- Pong. No, I'm serious. Technically, the first--and last--"computer" game I ever played with any alacrity. Yes, I know you can play it on cellphones, but sometimes you can't go home again. This is one of those times.
- The BASIC programming language. At one time, I seriously thought that I could, theoretically, fire up any computer in the world and start coding in BASIC. (This, not coincidentally, was also the last time I ever thought that it was possible to know everything there was to know about computers.)
- The ability to make fun of other people's music by playing a 33 RPM album at 45 (or 78, if you had the really old-school "phonograph" like my parents did).
- For that matter, playing a vinyl record backwards, mocking the idea that you'd hear Communist and/or Satanic propaganda.
- The cultural meme that programmers were too smart, too freakishly creative to have their jobs offshored to people who are treated like interchangeable code monkeys.
- Swapping cassettes with a friend without worrying that s/he would run into DRM issues (or you'd have the RIAA goons kicking your door down in the wee hours like the Soviet KGB).
- Being able to watch a movie in the comfortable knowledge that only the spaceships and laser-bolts and light-sabres were CGI'd.
- The handy supply of doodling paper Mom brought home from her job as a punchcard operator.
- Being scolded for wasting time writing a few dozen PRINT statements to make an ASCII art Christmas tree on the 6" wide silver roll-paper the TRS-80 printers used. (Use * for the foliage, | for the trunk and @ for the ornaments.)
- A culture where pornography was opt-in. 'Nuff said.
