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Published On: Jul 23, 2004 09:21 PM
Total entries in this category:
Published On: Jul 23, 2004 09:21 PM
Generation gaps - Computers and "Land of the Lost"
Andy Hertzfeld's story of
Switcher brought back memories but when I tried to share memories of "Land of
the Lost" with a younger co-worker I realized we were on different
wavelengths.
This evening I just read Andy Hertzfeld's
memories of "Switcher",
which was like reading a Paul Harvey story where you follow what seem like
mundane events or people only to end at something that leaves you thinking,
"Well, I'll be..." For anyone who doesn't know what Switcher is or hasn't read
the story, I encourage him to go read it now before reading here any further.
I'd hate to spoil the end.
My first professional experience with a Mac was with System 6, which had a feature that I found nearly useless simply because Macs at the time came with so little memory. Our Mac IIcx and IIsi machines had come to our office as hand-me-downs with five megs of memory and the Finder enabled. The Finder enabled? What else was there? Multi-Finder.
The Multi-Finder was a memory hog in an environment where we were trying to run Aldus PageMaker 3.02 and although we discovered it quickly, we also kept it turned off to eek out every drop of memory we could. Of course in System 7 the Multi-Finder was "always on" and known only as the Finder.
While reading this story I wondered to myself how one of my co-workers would react. George just turned 24 and is one of those "kids" who has grown up with computers. I had limited exposure to Radio Shack TRS-80's in grade school and Apple II's in high school and could never talk my parents into a computer for me in college. Today, I'm seeing the generation gap between those who grew up without computers and those who have always had exposure to computers. I doubt George has ever heard of Multi-Finder and could never appreciate how it has contributed to today's Mac environment.
This reminds me of a discussion that George and I had about Saturday morning shows. I remarked that I missed "humans" on Saturday morning shows such as "Land of the Lost". George immediately agreed. We both loved the Sleestak and he was trying to remember the name of the monkey-like people. Immediately, I said they were the "Pakuni" and their names were "Ta", Sa" and "Cha-ka" or something like that. I continued to name the dinosaurs, "Grumpy", "Alice" and "Dopey" and mentioned how Holly would ride Dopey. George then looked at me blank faced. He didn't know what I was talking about. A little later I realized he was referring to the remake of "Land of the Lost" and had never heard of the original.
My first professional experience with a Mac was with System 6, which had a feature that I found nearly useless simply because Macs at the time came with so little memory. Our Mac IIcx and IIsi machines had come to our office as hand-me-downs with five megs of memory and the Finder enabled. The Finder enabled? What else was there? Multi-Finder.
The Multi-Finder was a memory hog in an environment where we were trying to run Aldus PageMaker 3.02 and although we discovered it quickly, we also kept it turned off to eek out every drop of memory we could. Of course in System 7 the Multi-Finder was "always on" and known only as the Finder.
While reading this story I wondered to myself how one of my co-workers would react. George just turned 24 and is one of those "kids" who has grown up with computers. I had limited exposure to Radio Shack TRS-80's in grade school and Apple II's in high school and could never talk my parents into a computer for me in college. Today, I'm seeing the generation gap between those who grew up without computers and those who have always had exposure to computers. I doubt George has ever heard of Multi-Finder and could never appreciate how it has contributed to today's Mac environment.
This reminds me of a discussion that George and I had about Saturday morning shows. I remarked that I missed "humans" on Saturday morning shows such as "Land of the Lost". George immediately agreed. We both loved the Sleestak and he was trying to remember the name of the monkey-like people. Immediately, I said they were the "Pakuni" and their names were "Ta", Sa" and "Cha-ka" or something like that. I continued to name the dinosaurs, "Grumpy", "Alice" and "Dopey" and mentioned how Holly would ride Dopey. George then looked at me blank faced. He didn't know what I was talking about. A little later I realized he was referring to the remake of "Land of the Lost" and had never heard of the original.
Posted: Tue - May 4, 2004 at 11:15 PM