In 1962 if I wanted to buy a computer it would cost me millions of dollars.
And the computer I would get would be huge and consume large amounts of energy.
Now I can buy a decent computer for $500 and it will consume much less energy while being smaller and will much more features.
There is far more material wealth today, including computers, but there is far, far less liberty and a great deal more immorality and incivility. People today act like animals. Even worse, they take pride in it. Things weren’t perfect back then, but at least most people aspired to be something better. Now it’s a mad rush to the bottom, but at least we have computers...
“In 1962 if I wanted to buy a computer it would cost me millions of dollars.”
I guess one difference was that we did things, QUITE WELL, without computers back then. Look at the development timetable for the SR-71. It takes 5 times as long now. We built Apollo without computers, and pretty much built the Shuttle without computers 10 years later. Now instead of building spacecraft, we build PowerPoint charts of things that never (or barely ever) fly.
Computers are cheap now, and powerful - but we did quite well in the past too, when people drove around town without some voice telling them where to turn.
If you were a kid in 62 you would have no need of a computer. But you would want and probably have the following:
A refrigerator box-you can make anything out of a refrigerator box including space ship, race car, house, and yes even a computer
A BB gun- in my neighborhood we didn't shoot our eyes out, we shot our playmates
homemade slingshot- strong rubber band or surgical tubing
A bicycle with one gear and no helmet -preferably made from bike parts obtained from dump
Baseball glove-well worn
homemade gocart with wheels from a baby carriage -inspired by little rascals
flexible flyer for sledding-
Ice skates
Transistor radio- FM? what is FM
HO train set with tunnels- if you could get Dad to stop playing with it
an erector set and Lincoln logs- poor kids today only know legos
sea monkeys- yes they are real, really
And a full set of baseball cards with your favorite team to use to make cool sounds when put on bike spokes(who knew we were throwing away thousands of dollars.
Life doesn't get better than that.
“In 1962 if I wanted to buy a computer it would cost me millions of dollars.”
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What on earth would you have done with a computer in 1962?
They were little more then punch card tabulators back then.
They ran on vacuum tubes...hundreds, even thousands.
Even today, what purpose is a home computer without internet?
Many things were cheaper then.
20 thousand bucks was a good salary.
I paid 7200 bucks for my first airplane, a Cessna 172, which I flew from coast to coast, and into Mexico.
If that very same plane is still flying, it would cost
20+ thousand today.
My last two planes were Beach Bonanzas. They were not expensive in the late 70s. Those same planes today would be very far out of reach for me.
Compare the cost of a new car then and now.