I want to compile a list of things or trends that either deviate from the mainstream, have long become antique, or spark my memory for a different reason. Why indulge in this exercise?
For one, it provides an opportunity to explore the cult and maybe spread further interest. Two, it enables me to consider how much of my interest in a particular trend owes itself to the very idea of the cult, and how much to genuine utility inherent to the idea.
A significant portion of the list consists of antique devices, while some leads into upcoming developments.
- One-handed aerial keyboards
- Wearable computing
- Simple, few-function, keyboard-based phones
- Pay phones
- A compass as a primary navigational aid.
- Record players
- Lisp
- Prolog
- Go (the language)
- Assembly programming
- Old-school computational units: Edsac, Commodore, Atari
- Raspberry PI-based retroactive game consoles
- Piko Dat Toy Learning Computer
- Film cameras
- Samovars
- Antique gas-based coffee-makers
- Pagers
- Lambda Calculus
- Gentoo Linux
- BusyBox
- Computing model with strictly ROM-based storage, RAM-based working memory
- O(log n) memory computing models. Ex: Finite State Machine or log-space working-tape Turing Machine.
- Blackberry
- A stand-alone wrist-watch phone (without smartphone tethering)
- Bulletin Board Systems
- MP3 stand-alone players
- Memory techniques. See the Mentat Wiki or Litemind
- Zork
- Biohacking
- Dumb-terminal-based computing with write-only cloud access for storage.
- Neuromancer
- Stalker
- Free Jazz
- Short-wave radio
- Midnight commander
- Hourglass
- The three laws of robotics
- Handwritten letters
- Ring networks
- Esperanto
- 2G cellular networks
- Diskman
- SMS-based protocols
- Ragas (Sound of India and Rajan Parrikar Music Archive)
- 8-bit sound
- Punch cards
- Correspondence Chess
- Programming a Computer For Playing Chess, 1949 publication
- Biotechnology
- Well-Tempered Clavier
- Miles Davis, On the Corner
- Cellular-phone-free life
- Cold showers
- Polaroids
- Shared economy
- Bartering system
- DIY alternatives to commercial packaging and substances
- Schrödinger’s cat
- Open BSD
- Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland
- Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions
- Interactive and exploratory publications
Questions, comments? Connect.