string can phone

Spare Time Gizmos uses his, wisely. We are particularly intrigued by the COSMAC ELF 2000 and the SBC6120 — both machines the we, sadly, will probably never build.

A 1999 Wired article by Howard Rheingold on the un-cliched use of technology by the Amish:

Amish settlements have become a cliché for refusing technology. Tens of thousands of people wear identical, plain, homemade clothing, cultivate their rich fields with horse-drawn machinery, and live in houses lacking that basic modern spirit called electricity. But the Amish do use such 20th-century consumer technologies as disposable diapers, in-line skates, and gas barbecue grills. Some might call this combination paradoxical, even contradictory. But it could also be called sophisticated, because the Amish have an elaborate system by which they evaluate the tools they use; their tentative, at times reluctant use of technology is more complex than a simple rejection or a whole-hearted embrace. What if modern Americans could possibly agree upon criteria for acceptance, as the Amish have? Might we find better ways to wield technological power, other than simply unleashing it and seeing what happens? What can we learn from a culture that habitually negotiates the rules for new tools?

How the Computer Works: selected scans of the 1979 book.

NB: don’t trust everything you read.

Shorpy is the 100 year-old Photoblog. Well, the blog is not 100 years-old.

Found via Dinosaurs and Robots.

It’s 1975, and IBM wants to show you the future. A slideshow of images. That’s a real slideshow, by the way, of real slides. No powerpoint, no laptops, no digital projects. A carousel.

Click. Click. Click

Scott Beale takes us through the Consumer Reports test-photo archives.

THIS IS SO WRONG.

Shredding an Asteroids cabinet in microseconds.

Pong as a choose-your-own-adventure book.

Interesting idea, which upon reflection seems very boring. And the specific implementation interface is horrible

Le Commercial for Amstrad personal computer.

A review of Fringeware.