Computer Folklore, Circa 1984

savetz writes "The full text of the classic 1984 computer book Digital Deli, The Comprehensive, User-Lovable Menu of Computer Lore, Culture, Lifestyles and Fancy, is now on the Web. (Autstralian mirror) A wonderful look at technology culture in the golden age of the microcomputer. 20 other old computer books are at the site, too."

Comments

Heh, Xerox

[SirDaShadow]

"X" is for Xerox: the word processor's friend. Even though your computer printer will gladly produce 340 copies of your 430-page report, it could have a coronary at the end. If you use a slow daisy wheel printer (one page every few minutes), this might take over two hundred days to print nonstop. A special benefit for dot matrix users is that xeroxing makes the dots fill in nicely to look more like letter-quality hard copy.

Wow. One page every few minutes. And users complain because their laser printer takes 20-30 seconds to warm up...

Re:Heh, Xerox

[SmackCrackandPot]

Wow. One page every few minutes. And users complain because their laser printer takes 20-30 seconds to warm up...

Back in the 80's, when all we had was the Atari dot matrix printer, our neighbors once asked about the strange noise they kept hearing in the early evenings and on the weekends (we lived in terraced housing). Every time a listing or screen dump was printed out, they thought we were using some kind of machine to strip the wallpaper off the walls.

Introduction to Networking (QUE)

[Lobo_Louie]

I have an old (~1994?) Introduction to Networking (QUE) text in which it says TCP/IP is a standard that will more or less fade because the DOD insists that future protocols comply with GOSIP (Government OSI Profile). Nice call QUE!

"Net Speak"

[penguinboy]

Reading through this article, I spotted this bit:

"Whenever there's a lull in the conversation, some fool Atari owner invariably throws out the telecommunications equivalent of "What's your sign?":

WHAT R U ALL USING?

Interesting to see that while parents today complain about their kids using incomprehensible speech in IM, their generatation was doing it 20 years ago (and it was just as looked-down on then).

Whoa...

[Anonymous Coward]

And with the introduction of Apple's next generation of easy-to-use 32-bit computers in the Lisa/ Macintosh series, the Apple culture seems destined to grow and flourish.

I guess there was a time apple wasn't doomed.

I see you are writing an article, Mr. Gates...

[MsGeek]

And of course, you can see where this line of thought took Microsoft. Clippy. Microsoft Bob. At least the latter got Gates laid.
^_^

Computers probably do cause birth defects

[Julian Morrison]

...it's just that the heaviest users are all virgins, so nobody's had an opportunity to notice.

I coulda had a hardcopy.

[RenaissanceGeek]

I was just at a local library book sale and saw a copy of this.

It was a paperback, so it would've been $0.10.

And I didn't pick it up, because my arms were already kind of full, and it wouln't have fit into the stack very well. (that, and I thought that it looked kind of useless.)

If only i had known that this was HISTORY that I was looking at (and not 10-year-old cruft),I would have surely bought it.

*ARRGH*!!