But, Bill, maybe you did influence at least one student or more when you showed them the PDP or VAX. Perhaps we don't know who, but we have to keep believing that we are influencing someone somewhere. The fact that you are 73 (Jon also said he is in his 70s) and your passion is rock solid is an excellent attestation that those who love computers are unique and will always do so. We don't need every techie to be involved, only the passionate ones. Josh is deep into classic computers in his thirties, as he said. Sellam joined the group in his twenties, thirty years ago. Many of us are of different ages. I am in my fifty and touched the first computer key on a keyboard in 78. This group maybe one of the last mailing lists standing about classical computer. To be specific: I saw a lot of Discord channels on retro computers but they all lack true experienced folks who actually worked on such machines. I guess the most important thing is for that special geek out there is to be aware of this distribution and make sure to keep it running
Regards, Tarek Hoteit AI Consultant, PhD +1 360-838-3675 > On May 19, 2024, at 09:31, Bill Gunshannon via cctalk <cctalk@classiccmp.org> > wrote: > > > On 5/19/2024 11:14 AM, Tarek Hoteit via cctalk wrote: >> A friend of a friend had a birthday gathering. Everyone there was in their >> thirties, except for myself, my wife, and our friend. Anyway, I met a Google >> engineer, a Microsoft data scientist, an Amazon AWS recruiter (I think she >> was a recruiter), and a few others in tech who are friends with the party >> host. I had several conversations about computer origins, the early days of >> computing, its importance in what we have today, and so on. What I found >> disappointing and saddening at the same time is their utmost ignorance about >> computing history or even early computers. Except for their recall of the >> 3.5 floppy or early 2000’s Windows, there was absolutely nothing else that >> they were familiar with. That made me wonder if this is a sign that our >> living version of classical personal computing, in which many of us here in >> this group witnessed the invention of personal computing in the 70s, will >> stop with our generation. I assume that the most engaging folks in this >> newsgroup are in their fifties and beyond. (No offense to anyone. I am >> turning fifty myself) I sense that no other generation following this user >> group's generation will ever talk about Altairs, CP/M s, PDPs, S100 buses, >> Pascal, or anything deemed exciting in computing. Is there hope, or is this >> the end of the line for the most exciting era of personal computers? >> Thoughts? > > > I'm 73. How do you think I feel. I worked for 25 years in a Computer > Science Department of a University and not only did they not teach any > of the history. They mostly didn't know it themselves anyway. I kept > PDP-11's and Vaxen in the department for the students to see and, if > they wished, use but eventually I was told it was wasting space and > when they moved the department to the new science building there was > no space allocated for anything but the bare minimum of equipment. > > bill
