RCR Episode 107: The end of retrocomputing

Panelists: Paul Hagstrom (hosting), and Earl Evans

Host’s Topic: The end of retrocomputing

We here on the speaking end of these microphones have a pretty similar timelines with computers, having been young and eager when computers were just entering the “personal” era. No doubt a part of the current interest in re-exploring that time is nostalgia. Will people who were 10 in 2003 (Bart Simpson aside) play around with old Dell Windows boxes when the mid 2030s roll around? Did people who were 10 in 1920 seek out old standing mixers to play with in the 1960s? The time we focus on is generally the point when the technology was new and changing and finding itself, isn’t that going to be the time “retrocomputing” will always focus on? What for you lies outside the bounds of the hobby interest—too new, too widely available, too closed, too …? to “feel like” retrocomputing? It’s not about who can play or what anyone calls it, but what personally is the endpoint of your own interest?

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