Dear ex-vintage computing fans,
Vintage computing, ah, yes, fun isn’t it? Well, at first, yeah, it is fun, but once you really get into the meat of vintage computing, pretty soon, you realize you are quickly operating in a community that is fast becoming short handed.
In the old days… okay, fine, to be quantitative and unambiguous, in the 1970s and 1980s era, there was an unusually large number of people, even including especially young children, who were eager to learn technology and work in that field. This resulted in the 1980s and 1990s boom of professional electrical engineers and computer programmers, who quickly decided to drive the computer revolution and work at companies of the like of Apple Computer and Microsoft. As a result of this generation who lived through tremendous innovation within their lifetime, there was a once avid community of vintage computing enthusiasts. Many old-timers viewed the old computer technology as monumental, themselves and their tech career being indebted to the old technology that came before them. Therefore, they saw it as high value to maintain the old computers and some time to relive the old way of computing.
I myself am indebted to this community of old timers who were passionate to keep things living on into what was the present, but is now the past of the 2000s era, right up until the year 2010. Thanks to their due diligence to documenting their know-how and sharing their knowledge with new community members, I was able to get up and running on some particular vintage Apple II hardware pretty quickly, and use it as a tool to backup old data from an old black and white compact Macintosh SE. Finally, after the fact, I too became enthusiastic about learning about the old vintage Apple II computing hardware.
But, as I am now seeing become more evident as time goes on, people like me are an utmost minority. As time goes on, I’m seeing the community of old timers shrink. That is, the community of people who have their knowledge of vintage computing from actually living during the era and working with the technology in its original time frame. The statement on its own is, of course, inevitable, but that is not the only thing at play. Not only is the community of people versed in the old technology shrinking, but a similar effect is also happening with the community of modern tech workers. How is that? I will explain the details of that, which requires quite an intricate explanation.
Overall, the world population is growing, and the population of tech workers in absolute numbers is likewise growing. But, the way this is happening is primarily through a change in demographics in the tech population. If I were to succinctly state the primary differentiator in demographics, it is this: In the old days, people got into technology because they were eager to learn and work with it, regardless of the economic payouts. Nowadays, people are primarily in the tech business for the money.
Now, this is where the differentiation between cultures becomes critical. The old order of engineering that was based off of “free-will” choice to participate as a passion, that had a strong U.S. American presence. The modern era of those who are in it for the money, that has a strong Asian presence. Europeans, well, they were historically, and still are, somewhere in the middle, so they have stayed a bit more stable over the decades, though still subject to fluctuation. Obviously, as it turns out, the “free-will” participation proved to be quite unpredictable, being left to chance. Though U.S. American participation had a “boom” in the 1970s and 1980s, it had a “bust” following in the 1990s and 2000s. However, in per capita terms, arguably the per capita level of innovative technology workers in 2020 is about on par with that of 1920. Not bad, still pretty good, but it could be better.
But the big question to ask, is why? Why were Americans previously so excited, in terms of a per capita basis, learning about technology in the 1970s and 1980s? For as much as we know, that is just as good a question as a mystery. All we know is that it did happen in the old days, and the old-timers of tech are now a valuable but finite resource of the overall tech talent pool that is running out. The best we can do is plan in advance for the predicted drought of some types of tech talent when we see other types of tech talent are booming in supply, and plan accordingly.
I will miss the people with the old order of tech talent, and I am sad to see the knowledge fade away from the mainstream purview of the tech profession, but ‘tis the nature of the tech world, and we must learn to move on with limited access to skilled human resources in the old areas, with full knowledge of the fact that when I say “old,” it is not in fact obsolete. The knowledge in areas like electrical engineering is used as practiced every day by modern computers at the lowest levels, albeit with the fact that less and less people still understand how it works. In addition, the fact is that the electrical engineering knowledge to understand modern computers keeps getting more and more advanced.
The vintage computing at its fullest community sure was fun, but looking forward into the future, we’re going to have to limit our fun more and more to a “think small” approach, while the old order technology that we work with in our vintage computing hobby becomes more and more of literally, an artifact of the “giants who came before us,” of which we are literally incapable of working at an even, eye-to-eye level with what the giants of the past did.
Until we meet again,
- quorten
p.s. Key takeaway: money talks. If you really do need people to still be in the field, keeping the job well-compensating will ensure a steady flow of supply to meet demand. But, if you make the U.S. American-style statement of pursuing your “free-will” passions for your career, the supply of talent is left to chance, and naturally it will fluctuate over the decades. This is perfectly normal with any “free-will” decision, and it can be seen in other areas too: religion, marriage, divorce, and so on.