No, it's not about a new Time Machine SDIO card...

I was musing the other day, as I seem to do more and more often, if I could go back in time to my college days (not the American kind, but close enough) in the seventies, what portable computer and peripherals I would take with me (now, don't ask why, of all things, I'd take a computer with me. I don't make the rules, mh'okay?).

Stunningly enough, the only combo that would fit my needs of yore were my Psion Series 3a and my Canon BJ-10x printer. I'm not entirely certain whether I could find the ink to refill the bubblejet's cartridge back in the seventies, but I'm fairly positive something could be brewed up. In a pinch, I'd switch for my Psion 5mx, as it has a much better keyboard, but then I'd have to live with a really bad screen (and I know I had a crappy desk light back then).

Did anyone else have this epiphany that most of our modern cargo pants tech would have been effectively useless thirty years ago? I mean, the Nokia N800 is luvverly an'all, but what would one do with it in 1978? Connect to a seventies WiFI-enabled UNIX server?

Consider it an hommage to the humble Psions, who reminded us that we've allowed ourselves to give up on a lot of basic computing tasks, in order to get all the pocketable glitz we enjoy today.

Too many recursive paradoxes in there for my poor head. Conclusion probably right, but inferred from incorrect postulates :

- using a Psion (*any* Psion) in college in the 70s would get you abducted by the FBI (or local equivalent thereof) and indefinitely sequestered to Area51 (or local equivalent thereof), so fast that you wouldn't have time to worry about bubblejet ink, and,

- if someone in the future had invented a time machine that was reliable and foolproof enough that someone in the present could use it to goof away in the past, well, we'd know, right ? :-)

I am thinking of "back to the future", how about the history of sports almanac. Go to Vegas and never lose a bet, buy IBM and stop them from putting Microsoft on the first million PC's. Oh the fun we could have....


And I dont know about you but I have given up nothing. My n800 does everything I want it to, and more. An n800 would be MORE than enough power to run any code written in 1970, dont you think?

yeah, but how to get the code onto and off of it.

You guys are waayyy too serious about this. I started from the "old fart axiom": "You kids have it so easy these days! Back in my time we didn't have [insert random rambling]..."

The gripping hand: Who's going to give us Data for the 770/N800?

The program, not the android. Sheesh...

input is onscreen keyboard, output is screen/audio. What are you looking for a punch card reader for the n800? Its 2007 and the n800 still can't print? What other media was available in 1978? I used to put basic code on my audio cassete recorder for storage, but that was 1984, it was always fun to play back and listen to.

20 years from now time travelers will come back to laugh at our N800s. Wait-- go back. Ack... now I understand why Larry Niven bemoans the lack of a good time travel syntax...

In 1978 you could have interfaced to a paper tape reader. Some of them were _fast_. And if you were good you could actually read them directly.. say, if it had your Basic program or other ASCII on it.
On the time travel expedition I would probably have brought my Linux laptop stuffed with tools and software and storage. From rs232 ports you could have easily built interfaces to a lot of stuff. Then I would have loaded data, processed it, and pushed it back out. Just as I did with my first Unix computers about a decade later or so, I sent data and code from a minicomputer through X.25 via self-made transport protocols, massaged the data on the unix box, and pulled it back. That saved a lot of work and I saw the power of the Unix way (simple tools and filters that do one thing only but do it well, and which can be chained together). Ah, and I would have brought the N800 as well, as it could talk to the laptop at least.. and the computer folks of then would have fainted when seeing it and hearing the specs. That would be worth watching.

any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic -- Arthur C Clarke

someone else suggested that any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo.


personally, if I went back 27 years to when I had my first computer as a young teenager, and took my Zaurus or my N770, the teenager would be amazed that I didn't have only 4K, nor only 4MB, but 4GB of data in it... he would be amazed at the hires graphics, the stereo sound etc. And then he'd say "but it's so small, can you do any useful programming on it"? And I'd cough, and say I could hack some shell or perl scripting!

I hate it when they say "it's so small, can you do anything usefull with it?".