I’m sitting in front of a Power Mac “Quicksilver” model from 2000, running Mac OS 9.2.2 atop a 733 MHz G4 processor. As a certified computer junkie, I own several systems, but this one is almost certainly my favorite. The bong rings and the happy Mac face greets me warmly. Now, I’m not here to waste time: I have an article to write! Running right now are the Word ’98 document where I’m drafting this very essay, and my favorite internet radio station streaming in through iTunes. It’s exactly what I need to focus on my task. Nothing more, nothing less.
Retrocomputing is a delight. Riding on their reputation for sensible defaults, distractionless working environments, and responsive user interfaces, using old computers can feel like breath of fresh air. And it’s not just our nostalgic yearning for the past: recent testing has revealed that older software did tend to be simpler and more performant relative to the computing power of the time.
I’ve observed that people are increasingly frustrated with today’s operating systems—at least in the corners of the internet where I frequent. Affordable CPUs might now be 10 times faster (or more!), but the user experience does not feel 10 times as snappy. If the bloated, unnecessary anti-features of newer operating systems represent a regression, then turning back the clock certainly feels like a progression, wouldn’t you say? No, I don’t want to enable Siri. No, I don’t want automatic “suggestions” for what to do or say next. No, when I click the Start button, I don’t want random news articles popping up like a jack-in-the-box. I shouldn’t need to play whack-a-mole with my computer. With all of that dreck gone, you can readily see how old computers can be so liberating.
The delight of retrocomputing extends beyond software. The hardware itself is valuable, too—precious, even. For instance, older PCs are usually easier to upgrade and repair. Fixing basic hardware problems encourages people to take ownership of their technology, especially when all you need to peek under the hood is a Phillips-head screwdriver. It’s so easy, I dare say it could even be fun. More importantly, retrocomputing is the ecologically conscious choice. Why dig a deeper pit to extract even more resources from the Earth to build a fancy new computer when one that’s already built would work equally as well? Overall, the delight of older computers is apparent in both their hardware and their software.
But retrocomputing means different things to different people. For many, it is synonymous with nostalgia in general and retro gaming in particular, i.e., old computers are specifically the gateway to old games. In this view, retrocomputing is delightful because the computers are put to purely delightful use: fun and games and other diversions. The point is to have a good time away from the chaos of real life. Surely, no one would seriously use a PC from the mid-’90s to get actual work done… right?
Well, why not?
Even though I am an intensely nostalgic person (check out my burgeoning CD and VHS collection), I’ve come to learn that the true promise of retrocomputing lies not in its rose-tinted past, but as a critical tool for building a better future. Retrocomputing does not need to be relegated to a mere hobby for enthusiasts. I advocate for older computers to be used in earnest to facilitate genuine, sleeves-rolled-up productivity. Work could be just as delightful as play on a vintage setup.
Unfortunately, significant barriers prevent old computers (and their users) from being taken seriously in the workforce. Indeed, you could get ostracized by your fellow coworkers for daring to use “obsolete” technology. But by far the main obstacle is that old computers are denied on a technical basis the opportunity to network. To be clear, there’s no reason why your old computer couldn’t be used today to complete “boring,” “real-life” tasks: writing documents, filling out forms, paying bills, balancing the family budget. I’m writing this article on an old computer, after all! The problems arise when we consider that nearly all work we do nowadays happens online.
The most important thing computers do today is to let us connect with other people over the internet to exchange information, collaborate on projects and otherwise get “real work” accomplished. The reason why retro computers cannot participate is not because certain usages of the internet did not exist at the time older computers were built. (After all, we can develop new software for old computers.) No—the problem is that online information is arbitrarily kept behind technological gates that don’t need to exist. In order for retrocomputing to fulfill a useful and productive future, we need to make online functionality more easily accessible for the computers themselves.
Technical Barriers
Multiple technical forces are responsible for making the modern web largely unreachable to older systems. My awareness of these issues comes from firsthand experience with this old Mac to browse the modern web with Classilla—an old fork of Mozilla’s browser which, despite its age, is still the most sophisticated browser for Macs pre-OS X.
First, websites tend to be extremely presentation-heavy nowadays. Don’t get me wrong: separating a web page’s content from its presentation with the help of CSS is essential for accessibility. The separation makes it much simpler to write software to extract the relevant information. But over the years, CSS has grown so complex that you can make websites perform visual gymnastics that were inconceivable just 10 years ago. CSS3 animations in particular are absolutely out of reach of yesterday’s computers. In practice, the newest features of stylesheets tend to overwhelm less sophisticated browsers, obfuscating valuable information in the process.
Next, so many websites use client-side JavaScript where they likely shouldn’t. From the perspective of retrocomputing, JavaScript places an undue burden upon the end user, forcing older machines to do extra computation just to make the important information appear onscreen. All that heavy-duty number crunching ought to take place on the server, not on the underpowered client. Because so many websites use the most advanced JavaScript techniques in order to conduct actual business (e.g., using AJAX or WebSockets to POST HTTP data instead of using old-fashioned HTML forms), older computers simply lack the capability to participate.
In a similar vein, the security requirements for most websites have skyrocketed beyond what vintage systems can handle. SSL and TLS, the technologies which encrypt internet connections to make them secure, have themselves evolved over time—ostensibly to protect users from increasingly sophisticated cyberattacks. Here’s my scalding hot take: is this really necessary? Why would a purely informational website (no interactivity on or input from the client) with no secret data have to be served over HTTPS? In my view, the majority of security measures that computers and their users have been forced to adopt are to mitigate a specific form of attack: the shady man in the middle. Large portions of the web could be more reachable on a technical basis if they weren’t bolted down so gosh-darn tightly. There will always be a need for certain transactions to be conducted securely—personal banking and such—but making the latest versions of HTTPS the baseline is in many cases an unnecessary hurdle.
You may have spotted the common thread: on today’s web, the information density is far too low. Browsers have to ingest all the JavaScript and all the CSS and contend with all the TLS cryptography just to get to the important bits. For most of today’s websites, the amount of actual information compared to the bandwidth and computational force expended is severely imbalanced.
Even though I just outlined several technical issues, they’re only indicators of the root cause. The real problem is not that old computers are forgotten about per se—the problem is that we choose to lock swaths of information and functionality behind cutting-edge browser technologies for no good reason. Old systems are largely barred from participating in today’s most important uses of computers not because they can’t, but because the stewards of the web keep that functionality behind a gate. Some do it willingly, others unwittingly, but the information remains locked away nonetheless.
What frustrates me most is how obviously better things would be, even for large tech giants like Google and Amazon, to be less wasteful of bandwidth and electrical power. Occupying less bandwidth is a polite and judicious use of the physical wires that connect us. Just because we can download data at dozens of megabytes per second doesn’t mean we have to deliver dozens of megabytes of cruft with every GET request. Today’s machines, from desktops to mobile phones, truly are supercomputers. So why do our extra bandwidth and performance capabilities need to be offset by all this pointless stuff? Can’t we simply have faster computers? I see no way around it: it is wrong to mandate that a browser eat an entire gigabyte of RAM just to access less than one megabyte’s worth of text. Lower bandwidth and CPU requirements improve the internet experience for everyone, not just the small-web and retrocomputer enthusiasts.
It’s All Doable
As far as I’m aware, the essential nature of business hasn’t changed very much, but the software we use to conduct it has. The gulf separating the two only widens over time. I cast doubt on the degree to which new hardware and software are strictly necessary to enable today’s workforce, despite the urgent proselytizing from large companies about the inevitability of their new technologies. On the contrary: to do basic work, only basic computers communicating over basic protocols ought to be required. Instead, we live in a world where the available channels to conduct business are over-engineered to the detriment of end users.
“Fixing” the web can feel insurmountable, especially since so much of our online lives depends on the tech giants. It’s simply unrealistic to expect Google Docs to ever be officially supported on Windows 98 even though it’s easy to imagine that such a tool could run reasonably well there. Think about it: if a multiplayer Unreal Tournament fragfest can zip along at 60 frames per second on a Pentium-class box from the ’90s, then surely real-time collaboration on a spreadsheet could work, too. Yet, here we are.
It may seem strange, but I daydream about a world where I can exchange email, pay bills, submit forms do other un-creative work with whatever I computer I choose. I don’t actually fantasize about filing tax returns on a 30-year-old computer saved from the dumpster, but I might actually have fun doing it because a computer like that would delight me. In general, older computers don’t get in my way. It makes me happy to feel my computer behaving as a straightforward tool.
There is a silver lining. I greatly appreciate services like lite.cnn.com, where I can stay on top of current events in a distilled, low-tech fashion that prioritizes the information — the news itself — above all else. I wish CNN went further with the concept, though. (There’s no clear way to access older articles, as far as I can tell.) At the very least, CNN has their sights set in the right direction: a simpler path to their articles is available for the people who want or need it.
Retro computers are delightful. Therefore, serious work aided by a retro computer could also be delightful. Unfortunately, technical obstacles block older computers’ path to online information, which is a problem because collaboration over the internet is the most important way we use computers today. However, these technical problems don’t require innovating new technical solutions. For all the important tasks a person would need to conduct online, they should be able to opt in to an unsophisticated, low-bandwidth alternative interface where they can comfortably access information and contribute new material. Old computers are not unwanted or obsolete; they are more than capable of connecting people across the world. We just need to lower the barrier to entry.
Charlotte Koch is a software engineer and aspiring author from the San Francisco Bay Area. She’s a contributor to the NetBSD operating system and very passionate about her Y2K-era Power Mac. If she’s not dabbling in one of her countless hobbies, then she’s probably playing Black Desert.
Member comments