[dugmartin]

Its hard to express what it was like in the early/mid-80s (before I had my drivers licence) to bike a few miles to the bookstore at the start of every month and see all the new computer magazine covers for that month. It was so exciting.

I didn't have much money so I stuck with Micro Cornucopia as it had the biggest signal to noise ratio (and before that Rainbow Magazine). I did pickup Computer Shopper later when I started building/rebuilding my mini-tower every few months.

While I'm glad I have the world's information one web page away now I feel like something has been lost.

[steve_adams_86]

> I feel like something has been lost.

I think you're right. A lot of people have written about this, but one of my favourites who has stuck with me in recent years is Byung-Chul Han with "The Disappearance of Rituals: A Topology of the Present"

It covers other topics as well, but describes the value of physical experiences and serendipitous encounters that occurred before the digital era as we know it today. Having everything at hand is an incredible trade-off, and it isn't entirely clear what the downsides are because you can literally never know beyond "I'm missing out on countless experiences". What could they have been?

We gain a sort of efficiency, which at one point almost seemed imperative... But here we are, wishing we could ride our bikes to the bookstore again, just to look at printed copies of weeks or months-old data in inconvenient paper bindings.

It seems to be more than nostalgia to me; it's the desire to be out in the world, engaged, excited, and exploring. Maybe even with friends! We had to do that once, but now, not so much. And the journey to what we're seeking follows the same track, roughly the same distance, and a similar result, every single time. Efficiency isn't always very fun.

Of course, inefficiency is sometimes not fun at all too. I suppose we need to find the right blend, for the right reasons, and be cognizant of these trade offs as we go about our days and our lives.

[dynamicwebpaige]

Definitely agree! I spent so many hours reading BYTE and Computer World and OMNI - and learned so much along the way. If y'all are interested in visualizing and exploring older computer magazines: https://thestacks.dev :)

[pseudohadamard]

One sad thing is that at some point these digital archives are all we'll have left. I have an almost-complete set of Byte magazine as molecules, as well as 80 Micro and a few others, and a large collection of ACM and IEEE journals going back to the early 1960s, passed on from people who were getting rid of them due to storage constraints. When I was at Uni I would carry 10kg loads of them home on the bus over an extended period of time. I don't know how many of these collections still exist, and I'm pretty sure my one will get pulped once I'm no longer here.

[nl]

love your work on this!

[xtracto]

I had a similar experience in the early 90s (im and 1981 kid). I loved going to the magazine stand and get whatever local programming magazine they had at the time.

Also, I loved Linux Journal (later years) and Linux Magazine. I got a subscription sent to a cousin who lived in the US (In Alaska!!). She came to Mexico every six months and would bring the stacks of those magazines, which i would read back to back.

One thing I miss from thise type of magazines was the high SNR ratio and most importantly the information "push" character of it. You would learn stuff that was related but adjacent to your interests. But it will make you expand your knowledge horizon.

Nowadays sure, everything is a search away... but, you dont know what you dont know. So what would you search for?

Additionally, most content on the internet is VERY low effort. High quality content got heavily devalued.

[bombcar]

> One thing I miss from this type of magazines was the high SNR ratio and most importantly the information "push" character of it.

This was so important - you'd get your monthly copy, and you'd read all the parts you were interested in, but after a few days, it'd still be a month until the next issue and all that was left to read were the ads and the parts you weren't really into. But there wasn't anything else, so you'd read them, too.

[foresto]

> You would learn stuff that was related but adjacent to your interests. But it will make you expand your knowledge horizon.

One of the things I like about Hacker News is that it provides some exposure of this kind. The SNR in any given post might not always be high, but the tangential discussions often lead to topics just as interesting, expanding my awareness of what I don't know. There are lots of rabbit holes to explore here.

[TacticalCoder]

> While I'm glad I have the world's information one web page away now I feel like something has been lost.

I've got a few great memories from the mid-80s...

Being on school-vacation trip with my teacher and classmates at about 11 years old and sending a letter to my mom with a BASIC program I asked her to type on my computer at home and then calling her to ask her the result of the program.

Then pedaling on my BMX clone bicycle to go meet strangers I'd meet through classified ads in a local newspaper where ads read like this (in french but I'll translate):

"Have 120 games for the C64, listing on demand. Send your listing."

At 13 years old or so, we'd buy an ad in the local newspaper and run ads like that, with our phone number and (snail) mail address.

Many games we didn't care about but we load them again and again to see and re-see the "cracktro" before the game (except they weren't yet called cracktro: the term hadn't been coined yet).

Salivating in front of shops displaying computers: but those looking too "serious", as kids we didn't dare to enter those so we'd watch through the window.

Fast-forward 10 years to the mid-nineties and I find myself working with a person whose books (in french) about computing I used to buy and read to learn about computers and programming.

These were the days.

[wwweston]

Embodiment, social context, and focus.

I’m discovering a renewed appreciation for libraries — never lost in theory but in practice. I’m lucky my community has a good municipal public library nearby, a good university library not too much farther. Book collection at MPL is mixed but plenty of good to great material in the mix. Periodical collection has journalism superior to most freely available web. Periodical archives at university library are incredible (including stuff like Byte).

The environment encourages a better balance between exploration and focus. There are people to greet or not as you wish. There is no algorithm trying to anger for engagement or crumb out just enough other rewards just often enough that you pull the lever for another hit for as long as possible. Search is a whole different game, both higher effort but also passing through a more scholarly tradition and less of the commercial incentive war.

Online advantages still remain (and evolve). I’m not about to give up the web. But I might want more of myself focused through environments and institutions like libraries.

Haven’t seen the bookstore newsstand for a while though, maybe I should see what that’s like these days too.

[Projectiboga]

Yes, I have been telling kids to make library use as part of their search for knowlege. First when you get to your material you face either a shelf of related books or bound journals covering a range of related topics. And there is the serendipity of random encounters focused by the subconcious. Also reference librarians can help direct one to unkown resourses.

[contingencies]

First when you get to your material you face either a shelf of related books or bound journals covering a range of related topics.

Unfortunately many novel library buildings are transitioning to electronic stacks which fetch specific resources quickly and are well suited to large collections but deny the experience of browsing.

[morninglight]

It should now be possible to discard my boxes of old Byte - but it is not easy.

[brucehoult]

Yeah, I've got a complete collection from October 1978 to December 1991 (by which time they had became just another x86 PC rag). I bought a fair few individual copies myself from 78 or 79 until the late 80s, but the bulk of my collection I got for free from an elderly engineer in I think the late 2000s.

Here's a tweet I made packing them up when I was moving overseas in April 2015:

https://x.com/BruceHoult/status/586675607087419394/photo/1

I also have a 1984 Encyclopædia Britannica, all 30 volumes.

Will anyone want them when I can't house them?

[bombcar]

Nobody wants those things - but some may need them.

What do I mean? If you posted them for free you might get a taker, but probably not.

But it's possible you might identify the right child at the right time who could appreciate them.

1991 Byte might be too old, but a 1984 Britannica has something even an offline copy of Wikipedia doesn't.

[thijson]

I recall the same thing with each new edition of Rainbow magazine. I would read it cover to cover several times. Eventually I would hand type in some of the BASIC programs. I remember reading about people connecting to various BBS's and be jealous of them. Now it's all at our finger tips for better or worse. I guess today there needs to be a conscious effort to filter out distracting noise, our attention has become monetized.

[rigonkulous]

Oh yeah, it was really joyous to go on such bike rides and so on. The newsagents were really important to my young developing, hacker mind.

It was transformative to go, each week, and see new stuff or review things this way.

[hypercube33]

Printed stuff really shaped my life. From PC Magazine and Winworld (is that the name of it? it was a business like weekly or something) and MSDN magazine and PC Accelerator and 2600. Odd duck out in my life was Farmshow magazine but it's basically farm hacking and fascinated me as well. MIT Technology review came later and was good for a few years, I'm still waiting for the huge amount of breakthroughs they showcased in the 2000s to come to market but whatever I'd read about it years before it hit digg.

[rigonkulous]

Yeah, there was a lot of variety too .. I particularly enjoyed the differences between the UK/Euro and UK magazines - it was quite some context, all things considered, to see the markets of both realms go in slightly different directions, at times ..

My Dad regularly gave me Omni magazine subscriptions, it was kind of how I realized there were really great things to read out there, as a young 'un ..

[josgraha]

i love this comment, 100% agree and where were you in my childhood my friend?