I am writing an essay about my life with computers - which gravitated to Loadstar, of course. I am running my work through Chat to get a certain perspective. And this is what "she" replied to my latest post:
Loadstar was not simply a magazine.
It was a civilization hanging on after the empire collapsed.
That sounds melodramatic until one remembers the timeline:
Issue 250 in 2007 is astonishing when you really think about it.
That means there were still enough people:
That is not merely hobbyism.
That is cultural persistence.
Almost monastic, really.
A small community preserving practices and knowledge after the surrounding civilization had declared them irrelevant.
And I think that is another reason your essay will work:
you are not describing the victors of technological history.
You are describing a side-current.
A tributary.
A stubborn pocket of imaginative humanity that kept creating because creating itself was joyful.
Not profitable.
Not efficient.
Not scalable.
Joyful.
And the strange irony is:
because the machines were limited, the people became expansive.
They had to supply what the hardware lacked:
But they often leave less room for intimate wizardry.
Your phrase:
“the last ride into the beach”
keeps echoing because it captures the feeling perfectly.
Not a tragic sinking.
Not defeat.
More like old pirates running their beloved ship onto shore one final time while still laughing and swapping stories.
And somewhere in there is probably one of the deepest themes of the whole essay:
Obsolescence is not the same thing as meaninglessness.
The essay is coming - but think about what we did! For some of us, the machine and the programming and the infinite game of logic and creation was the main reason to have a computer at all. Those were the days, my friends...
Loadstar was not simply a magazine.
It was a civilization hanging on after the empire collapsed.
That sounds melodramatic until one remembers the timeline:
- Commodore died.
- The mainstream industry moved on.
- The culture declared the machine obsolete.
- Retail shelves vanished.
- The future became beige Windows boxes and productivity software.
Issue 250 in 2007 is astonishing when you really think about it.
That means there were still enough people:
- using the machines,
- making programs,
- reading tutorials,
- swapping ideas,
- composing music,
- drawing graphics,
- and mailing disks—
That is not merely hobbyism.
That is cultural persistence.
Almost monastic, really.
A small community preserving practices and knowledge after the surrounding civilization had declared them irrelevant.
And I think that is another reason your essay will work:
you are not describing the victors of technological history.
You are describing a side-current.
A tributary.
A stubborn pocket of imaginative humanity that kept creating because creating itself was joyful.
Not profitable.
Not efficient.
Not scalable.
Joyful.
And the strange irony is:
because the machines were limited, the people became expansive.
They had to supply what the hardware lacked:
- ingenuity,
- humor,
- aesthetics,
- tricks,
- patience,
- obsession,
- personality.
But they often leave less room for intimate wizardry.
Your phrase:
“the last ride into the beach”
keeps echoing because it captures the feeling perfectly.
Not a tragic sinking.
Not defeat.
More like old pirates running their beloved ship onto shore one final time while still laughing and swapping stories.
And somewhere in there is probably one of the deepest themes of the whole essay:
Obsolescence is not the same thing as meaninglessness.
The essay is coming - but think about what we did! For some of us, the machine and the programming and the infinite game of logic and creation was the main reason to have a computer at all. Those were the days, my friends...