The 80s Club

I remember this game so well. It’s like I saw it yesterday…

Actually, I did see it yesterday, because my two year old was trying to play it! No kidding. I think this was my older brother’s first electronic game, along with the baseball version. He would play them for hours, never giving me a turn.

Somehow, it ended up in my house, and the crazy thing still works! (I can’t get a cordless phone that will keep a charge for more than 30 minutes, but this thing is still going strong!) I have a feeling kids today would laugh us out of the room if we tried to convince them that moving a few red dots around on a teeny-tiny screen could entertain them for hours. And we thought it was high-tech!

Ahhh…the simpler times.

The Internet Society has a nice long article all about the history of the internet, from its earliest inception on through modern times. As a pseudo-geek married to a geek, I found it to be an enjoyable read and quite informative. A couple excerpts related to the 80s:

Thus, by 1985, Internet was already well established as a technology supporting a broad community of researchers and developers, and was beginning to be used by other communities for daily computer communications. Electronic mail was being used broadly across several communities, often with different systems, but interconnection between different mail systems was demonstrating the utility of broad based electronic communications between people.

and:

In 1983, when Barry Leiner took over management of the Internet research program at DARPA, he and Clark recognized that the continuing growth of the Internet community demanded a restructuring of the coordination mechanisms.

also:

Starting in the early 1980’s and continuing to this day, the Internet grew beyond its primarily research roots to include both a broad user community and increased commercial activity. Increased attention was paid to making the process open and fair.

and lastly:

In 1987 it became clear that a protocol was needed that would permit the elements of the network, such as the routers, to be remotely managed in a uniform way. Several protocols for this purpose were proposed, including Simple Network Management Protocol or SNMP (designed, as its name would suggest, for simplicity, and derived from an earlier proposal called SGMP) , HEMS (a more complex design from the research community) and CMIP (from the OSI community).

For a great read, take a few minutes or ten, and read A Brief History of the Internet.

If you prefer to watch a film instead, check out

It’s so weird to see old TV and movies from the 80s where people are talking into cell phones that look like a shoe box. But this was the era that the cell phone started to become a high tech gizmo everyone wanted. Heck, I even had one. It was huge. I was working in a not so safe neighborhood and my husband insisted I have it in the car just in case. It was probably about 30 lbs!

You can read more about the history of cell phones here: The History of .Net.

Today not only are cell phones much, much smaller, they are multi taskers. Most can play the radio and/or an mp3, connect to the Internet, and offer video games for you when you’re bored.

Thank goodness cell phones have come a long way. Of course, if they hadn’t, I sure would have some nice biceps from lugging around my old cell phone!

Human Genome Project:
According to the Timeline page, this project’s beginnings hail all the way back to 1983; but it isn’t until 1987 that we see funding for the project underway. The project formally begins in 1990, and 1999 sees the first human chromosome completely sequenced.

The U.S. Human Genome Project, coordinated by DOE and NIH, is a multi-year effort to find all the genes on every chromosome in the human body and to determine their biochemical nature.

You can read more on the HGP website; and for a look at genetics explained in more average-person-friendly terms, stop by Genetics and Health written by Dr. Hsien-Hsien Lei.

The year: 1982
The place: In the Machine

This is a movie I, being a typical girl, did not see during the 80s. Thanks to my husband (who says this movie is what the Matrix wanted to be) I am ignorant no longer. This movie is all about being sucked into the Mainframe, and life and death are on the line. If you like sci-fi and love suspense and adventure, this movie is for you. Don’t expect the sort of graphics we are spoiled with now, but do keep in mind that for its time, TRON was cutting edge. This movie is definitely one to watch, if you want to hold any sort of claim to being an Old School Geek. In fact, The Husband says this movie is absolutely required.

You may remember the old TRON arcade game, or computer game(s?). Armagetron Advanced: a TRON clone in 3D may be just the thing you need to download- whether to relive your TRON fantasies, or just to pass some time. You’ll need access to a Geek or be a bit of a geek yourself to navigate the download and install process. Enjoy!

When I was in high school, my mother insisted that I take 2 years of typing and 1 year of shorthand classes. I hated it! I told myself there was no way that I would ever have the type of job that required me to sit down and type all day, let alone take dication! I wasn’t very good at it either. I was super fast, but very inaccurate - I still joke that I type 60 words a minute with 59 mistakes.

Of course, now I’m very grateful that I did what my mother told me to do, because as a writer, I spend a huge amount of time doing exactly what I thought I’d never do - tap away on a key board all day.

This is a tribute then to the old typewriter and today’s notebook or laptop computers. (Pictured below is a Dell notebook very similar to one I own). Since I was an English major, my parents gave me an electric typewriter as a graduation present when I got my AA degree. My roommates were so impressed when I moved into the dorm with this high-tech piece of equipment. They begged me to allow them to use it on occassion for reports and such.

Years later, now as a returning college student, it amazes me at how many kids (hey, I’m like 20 years old than them so I can call them kids) have their own laptop computers. You see them all over campus, in the coffee shop, bookstore, and library.

 From 1982 to 1985, I lived with my walkman permanently attached to my body. I especially liked wearing when I did research in the library. It was so quiet in there (not like most libraries these days), and it was kind of cool that I was listening to blaringly loud music in such a solemn environment.
 Today, I don’t live with it on, but my cell phone has an MP3 in it and I wear it when I go for walks. Actually, when you compare the two, other than size, they really aren’t that different. Here’s a Sony ICDU60 - 512MB Digital Voice Recorder w/ MP3 & Storage Device. Okay, I know, smaller in this instance is better, and it doesn’t just play music. But still, when you compare the two visually, not a whole lot of difference.