Comment on The Internet Desk
BertramDitore@lemm.ee 4 weeks agoYour description of those desks totally knocked some of my old memories loose. I remember going to a friend’s house in the late 90s when the first smallish “all-in-one” PCs started coming on the market (before the iMac claimed that space in ‘98). They had their new all-in-one PC set up on a tiny desk in the hallway outside their office. It was there so everyone in the family could use it, but I remember being shocked at how small it was, and so impressed that it didn’t need the whole corner of a room.
tiramichu@lemm.ee 4 weeks ago
For sure right!
What really changed though wasn’t the size of the computer, but how the computer produced value.
Initially, a lot of what people wanted computers for was to get their “document stuff” done, and that was what took up all the room, because of the printer, and scanner, and paper, and filing drawers, and so-on. And soooo many CDs for software you needed to get that all done.
I remwber when I was a kid, my babysitter used our Windows 95 machine to write up and print off a cover letter for job applications, and it was 9 year old me who taught her how to do it, lol.
I bet even when your friend set up their shiny new all-in-one, they still had the old computer and all its attached devices hiding away shamefully in the ‘office’ there somewhere…
So it wasn’t really miniaturisation that killed the computer room as much as it was every aspect of life going online. No physical disks anymore because software comes over the Internet. No need to print because 99% of our life and business can be done online. So all the things that filled up the computer room just ceased to be needed, and so did the room that held them.