I been lately thinking and here are my thoughts. AI is already here and its going to stay and grow, the last invention of humankind as they say.
The rise of internet and smartphones paved the way, but before these things there was.. others.
Functional technology that was far different and yet filled our needs to communicate, play and enjoy.
Data via audio. You could transmit digital data, ones and zeroes, with audio signal to computer. This was commonly
used with 8bit microcomputers with cassette decks. They were just normal dumb cassettes with the data stored as
an audio. You tell computer get ready read information and press play on deck player and wait for the game or app
to load up in the computer RAM and then type RUN.
Then there was the acoustic modems. A modem that transmits audio signal via phoneline to another computer and
the computers would interact with each other. Technically speaking the audio is reconverted to electric signals.
Dont get me started on BBS, I just saw a video about BBS over radio. In the age of internet, there is no such thing
as underground (unless you sell punk vinylsingles at the dark alleys) - this is deep off-the-grid-undeground shit.
EDIT : there is a comfybox inhouse blog post about BBS
Another pre-modern innovation was Vectrex (1982) - a gaming console with vector display with 3D capabilities.
No pixels, no framerates, no resolutions - only vectors. I guess Pong did the same thing. There is something
watching those decades old Vectrex vector games, the immersion would be on a different level if there was
a modern computing power running those vectors.
So, these techs are kinda obscure by now or least novelty of retro hobbyists. There are still something in with
these things, like what if we'd build impenetrable data copy protection by storing everything in a big clump of
audio and compress the hell out of it? Crack that shit, hex editors would be useless and reverse-engineering quite hard.
The rise of internet and smartphones paved the way, but before these things there was.. others.
Functional technology that was far different and yet filled our needs to communicate, play and enjoy.
Data via audio. You could transmit digital data, ones and zeroes, with audio signal to computer. This was commonly
used with 8bit microcomputers with cassette decks. They were just normal dumb cassettes with the data stored as
an audio. You tell computer get ready read information and press play on deck player and wait for the game or app
to load up in the computer RAM and then type RUN.
Then there was the acoustic modems. A modem that transmits audio signal via phoneline to another computer and
the computers would interact with each other. Technically speaking the audio is reconverted to electric signals.
Dont get me started on BBS, I just saw a video about BBS over radio. In the age of internet, there is no such thing
as underground (unless you sell punk vinylsingles at the dark alleys) - this is deep off-the-grid-undeground shit.
EDIT : there is a comfybox inhouse blog post about BBS
Another pre-modern innovation was Vectrex (1982) - a gaming console with vector display with 3D capabilities.
No pixels, no framerates, no resolutions - only vectors. I guess Pong did the same thing. There is something
watching those decades old Vectrex vector games, the immersion would be on a different level if there was
a modern computing power running those vectors.
So, these techs are kinda obscure by now or least novelty of retro hobbyists. There are still something in with
these things, like what if we'd build impenetrable data copy protection by storing everything in a big clump of
audio and compress the hell out of it? Crack that shit, hex editors would be useless and reverse-engineering quite hard.
- Description
- taking different path and dodging AI overlords
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