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.

Back 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. And that was the value.

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.

There was a brief and remarkable period in history from the mid 90s to the late 2000s where homes all across the land had a room that was referred to as “The Computer Room”

Not “The Office” no; for this room was not so pedestrian. It was a room whose entire function was to house the great monolith of The Computer.

A corner desk in veneered pine-effect plywood, atop which sat the great beige tower and CRT. A printer and a scanner straddling the desk like sentinels. Racks of CD holders built right into the fake pine, and a lidded box for floppy disks in a smoky translucent plastic, that for some reason came with lock and key as if the disks were precious jewels.

These days we have no need for such things, and the home office is once again simply an office. But for a while we had The Computer Room, and some part of me misses you.

The one I self-host shares nothing with nobody :)

Fair :)

As well as the pure cost saving there was also the notion that it was a futuristic look that would sell, and so boost profits that way, too.

And probably it did sell and market well - for a while.

I feel that consumers had become too trusting of carmakers - after all, cars have been getting better and better in terms of their usability for decades, so when carmakers went touchscreen everything, the first instinct of the average consumer would be to trust it and assume it represented an improvement.“They wouldn’t do it if it was worse, right?”

And so people buy the fancy futuristic car with no buttons, and only after driving it for a month does it sink in how much they truly hate it, and that they got sold a lie.

So there was always going to be that one generation of touchscreen-everything, before the people who got burnt by it are now the ones thinking “I won’t buy anything again that doesn’t have some buttons!”

This may in part be motivated by new guidance from NCAP, which will from next year require that all new cars have physical controls to earn the highest safety ratings.

https://www.evo.co.uk/car-technology/207666/buttons-could-replace-touch-controls-in-cars-thanks-to-new-euro-ncap-tests

Whatever the motivation though, I’m glad for it. Getting rid of buttons was always a dumb idea and I’m happy to see pushback.

My previous phone used to pocket-dial the emergency services annoyingly often, and it’s very not fun getting called back by the police to discuss why you’re dialling and hanging up on emergency services multiple times over.

This automatic emergency call is fine, but they really do need to minimise the number of false positives, which it looks like they’ve taken good steps towards.