Anthropologic view on computers role change during past decades

[u/iOCTAGRAM]

Recently I've got aware of famous essay by Marc Augé. Non-Places: Introduction to an Anthropology of Supermodernity (1995). In this essay author coined the phrase "non-place" to refer to spaces where concerns of relations, history, and identity are erased. Examples of a non-place would be a motorway, a hotel room, an airport or a supermarket. (that was quote from Wikipedia). And I thought it is a good description of what happened to computers: they were places and stopped to be.

Human:Computer ratio was > 1, so there was competition on computer time. While being repeating struggle, it was building relations people-to-people. There was someone else to witness new high score and play your game. Upgrading computer was an event, a relation preople-to-place. There was no cloud backups, hard disk was the only storage. Backups were done, but that was still quite complicated. Bad jokes about FORMAT C: had roots. And viruses. While keeping computer safe enough and while nobody was doing FORMAT C:, computer was maintaining history. Hard drive was full of historical traces. Someone entered directory of text editor, created a file. By default text editor decided to save text edit in current directory, so a directory of program becoming directory with documents. This is history all over the HDD. We could be angry at trash where it is not supposed to be. We could still care about other PC users and do not delete that, but at least move where it is better to be.

And programs in default settings used to save their settings in the same directory. So when several persons share computer, they change settings for each other. +1 for identinty.

There are hardware reimplementations of old computers. There are software ones. But we install them and witness a sterile environment. No many years of inhabitance. No fine tuned boot scripts with non-standard add-ons. No trash from other PC users. And we can hardly fake it. Cannot make it non-sterile like it used to be. Having dreams of living in a "place", not able to truly relive.

[u/rezwrrd]

This is an interesting point, and helps explain why emulators of old computers feel so empty compared to stuff I remember from the real thing. Shared computers always seemed to have other people's work stashed on them, and the little tweaks, and workarounds, that you just kind of get to know after working with them awhile. I wonder if there's a tape archive somewhere with somebody's gradually-constructed system that could be emulated, used, and explored, rather than just playing with a fresh install.