Old School - The Future Of Computers & Video Games

[Bill Tarling]

I figured it was time to start a new thread covering old videos and material from years ago about computers, video games, and wonderful techie inventions...

1966 Prediction Of The Home Computer

It's amazing to see some of the crazy and impossible "future uses" the computer would offer to the general public. Don't forget people were pretty naive, so try not to laugh too hard at some of the ridiculous uses they came up with. It's hard to believe they actually believed computers would be common household items, and could do insane stuff like provide shopping without leaving the house, let you pay your bills and do your banking from home, monitor live video feeds, etc.

Even crazier is the idea people would have more than one computer in the home, and the machines could communicate and access each other.. I know -- utterly crazy some of the stuff they came up with, but who knows... maybe someday in the distant future it might happen.... (nah!)

[bBvideo 560,340:tunvagel]

[/bBvideo]

[Bill Tarling]

Even from 1984, it's interesting to see and hear how developers and programmers approached projects as writers.

I especially love Steve Kitchen's [software Designer @ Activision] describing how they were able to create such a realistic simulation where people at home feel like they're actually flying the Space Shuttle -- and here all that time NASA was pretending that flying the shuttles was complicated with a lot of controls

[side note: Funny and old as the graphics may look, it's also important to realize the entire game had to fit on a cartridge which only held 8kb of total programming -- not much more than an average avatar image these days]

[bBvideo 560,340:tunvagel]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RLpP2uh-zmE[/bBvideo]

[logang]

It is amazing how computers have evolved over the years, though computers were actually a thing during my whole life, I think it would be a lot more amazing for those who were born in the era of the type-writer and got to see the introduction AND evolution of the home computer. The quick evolution/improvement of home computer hardware is an excuse I give my wife for why I need to build a new computer every year, it's worked for the past two years in a row, we'll see about next year.

[Bill Tarling]

Still one of the best episodes From The IT Crowd -- "The Internet"

[bBvideo 560,340:tunvagel]

[/bBvideo]