Dr. Patryk Wasiak (Independent Researcher)
Dr. Marcin Cabak (Institute of Pedagogy, University of Maria Curie-Sklodowska, Lublin)
DOI: https://doi.org/10.33008/IJCMR.2023.09 | Issue 10 | July 2023
In this article, we investigate a small community of ‘retro-programmers’ who use 8-bit microcomputers for coding. Writing code for old computers is embedded in the imagery of digital nostalgia. As we will demonstrate, investigating nostalgia for vintage computers as tools for creative coding, offers an insight into the cultural logic of the contemporary perception of old digital technologies.
When we think about retro-computing, probably the first thing that comes to our mind is retro-gaming, which is using vintage 8-bit microcomputers to play games from the 1980s, or contemporary games that share the 1980s vintage pixel-art aesthetic. However, ‘retro-computing’ refers to a broader range of practices that share the core element – digital nostalgia for the 8-bit microcomputers. We discuss ‘how’ and ‘why’ 8-bit home computers such as the Commodore 64 (C-64) are still used for a range of creative practices related to programming. While doing so, we address the central theme of this special issue of The International Journal of Creative Media Research and offer an insight into how contemporary retro-programming culture celebrates the past and attempts to reenact it through practices of creative coding.
We argue that the central value of the contemporary retro-programming culture is the nostalgia for the idealized image of creativity in the thriving amateur programming culture of the 1980s.[1] Retro-programming community builds connections between the notion of creativity and vintage 8-bit computers. Such positively valued imagery of the past is confronted with the negatively valued imagery of contemporary digital culture. The most celebrated elements of computing of the 1980s are limitations and simplicity of hardware that challenged computer users interested in coding, thus stimulating their creativity. Such imagery is juxtaposed with discussions on how contemporary digital technologies hinder creative practices. According to the narrative shared by the retro programming culture, in contemporary digital culture, knowledge on programming and computer architecture is not as easily available as in the 1980s. Moreover, the availability of ready-to-use tools for digital creative practices discourage computer users from learning about the underpinnings of computer technologies.
There are two distinct major retro-programming communities. The first community is built on the remembrance of the social impact of the entry-level BASIC programming language. The BASIC, an acronym for Beginners' All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code, was designed in 1964 as the first programming language which primary consideration was the ease of use for those with no prior training in computer science.[2] In the 1980s, all home computers were provided with BASIC interpreters that enabled accessible entry-point for learning to code. This language became a highly successful tool for creative experiments with programming and now it is a key element of the imaginary of the 8-bit computer era.
Retro-programmers embrace BASIC as a tool suitable for mastering programming skills and understanding the principles of computer science. Retro-programming, and the celebration of 8-bit computers as ‘retro’ machines, began in the 1990s but it became much more widespread in the 2000s and particularly the 2010s and 2020s. This community lies at the intersection of retro computing culture and the ‘learn to code’ movement. This movement, represented by the Code.org nonprofit emerged in 2000s as a result of the perceived lack of interest in obtaining programming skills as a social and economic problem.[3] However, as historian Janet Abbate has demonstrated, similar initiatives emerged in the 1960s and 1970s.[4] They aimed to seek social empowerment, particularly for women and other underrepresented groups by helping them to obtain valuable coding skills. In our paper, we will discuss how proponents of the benefits of learning how to code in programming languages for 8-bit computers draw from both cultural trends, the nostalgia for vintage digital technologies, and ‘learn to code’ ideology.
The second community is a small 8-bit platform ‘retro-demoscene’ that programs audio-visual presentations to demonstrate the mastery of programming skills and the capabilities of the hardware.[5] The demoscene has emerged in the late 1980s as a subculture which members aim to prove their technical competences by programming computer demos that include impressive audio-visual effects and mastery of coding skills. Aside from the majority of demosceners who embrace contemporary technologies, there is a small dedicated group of those who still use 8-bit computers, primarily the C-64 as their computer of choice. The C-64 introduced in 1982 became the most popular 8-bit home computer and achieved a substantial success both as a game machine and as a demoscene platform. Their key objective is to challenge the severe technical limitations of hardware and demonstrate how such constraints stimulate creativity in terms of creative programming and the design of audio-visual content of demos. Such a milieu distances itself from a contemporary PC demoscene that embraces contemporary hardware and programming tools that offer little technical limits when it comes to the design of demos. Contemporary demos, such as fr-041 debris, are usually complex 3D animations that fully use the possibilities of contemporary hardware and graphic engines.[6] Instead, retro-demosceners claim that the limitations of older hardware such as the C-64 offer possibilities for the pursuit of technical excellence and creativity, while arguing contemporary technologies hinder such pursuit.
Our case study is grounded in selected works on the cultural logic of nostalgia. We particularly refer to two relevant papers, Katharina Niemeyer’s essay on digital nostalgia, and Christina Lindsay’s study of a 21st century community of dedicated users of a vintage 8-bit Tandy Shack TRS-80 computer.[7] Lindsay’s study investigates a small community that existed in early 2000s, however, the cultural logic of such a community closely resembles contemporary retro-programing communities. Although, we will refer to Lindsay’s work, we will discuss contemporary retroprogramming culture drawing from our research.
Such works offer an interpretative framework that helps to grasp the cultural logic of retro-programming. Niemeyer in her essay distinguishes multiple forms of ‘digital nostalgia’ such as ‘nostalgia expressed via the digital’ or ‘nostalgia for the digital.’ As Niemeyer notes: ‘Nostalgia for the digital is a yearning for the early digital culture, a longing for the human relations it created but also their devices, techniques and related user rituals.’[8] Retro-programming is an instance of nostalgia for the digital, but it is also performed through other digital technologies, so both categories are relevant to this article. Later, we will investigate how retro-programming culture constructs a juxtaposition between past and present by emphasizing difference in human relations, devices, and techniques between the mythologized 8-bit microcomputer era and the contemporary world.
As research material for this article, we use content analysis of books that teach retro-programming, website content, YouTube videos, forums, and selected digital artifacts such as retro demos. The article follows a three-part structure. First, we offer an introductory section overviewing the cultural logic of retro-programming and discussing relevant secondary literature on different forms of digital nostalgia. Later, we will discuss how this community builds imagery that confronts the positively valued past and the pessimistic image of the present. In the final section, we examine how the repertoire of programming-related digital nostalgia is used in identity construction. Discussion on these topics will offer an insight into the relationship between practices of creative coding and the construction of imagery of digital nostalgia.
Section One: Performing digital nostalgia in retro-programming culture
A popular ‘retro-computing’ term refers to a broad range of practices structured upon celebrated ‘retro’ hardware and software, as well as rose-tinted imagery of both human-machine and social relations related to computers from a bygone era.[9] There are four distinct retro-computing trends, that usually overlap with each other. First, and definitely the most popular, is retro-gaming, which refers to an interest in original vintage computer games played on original hardware and accessed with emulators, or playing and creating games that resemble vintage games in terms of structure and particularly the pixel-art aesthetic, for instance Terraria (2011), Shovel Knight (2014), or Blasphemous (2019).[10]
Another form of retro-computing is collecting and preserving vintage computers, accompanying peripherals, and software. Preserved computers can be used to run software but they are often too valuable to turn them on at all. A smaller community not only collects the original hardware but also attempts to use their computers for computing in the contemporary world. This form of retro-computing is extensively discussed by Lindsay with the case study of contemporary use of the TRS-80 computer.[11] The TRS-80, introduced in 1977 was the first highly popular and affordable 8-bit home computer. Although, its capabilities were less impressive than of the more famous Apple II introduced in the same year, the TRS-80 costed half of its price and played a pivotal role in the popularization of home computers in the US. Lindsay discusses a milieu of devoted TRS-80 fans that claim to use their machines as their everyday digital technologies. However, such attempts are mostly proof-of-concept challenges to demonstrate that 8-bit computers can do the same tasks as a contemporary PC. The most popular form of such an appropriation is to try to browse the internet on 8-bit computers. Lindsay notes the centrality of nostalgia for such a small community:
One of the primary reasons that people were still using their TRS-80 machines was nostalgia. This was more than just wishing for a time of (depending upon one’s viewpoint) less or more complex computing. However, there was an element of fond remembering of people’s introduction to the computing world.[12]
The last, and of course most relevant here, form of retro-computing is using original 8-bit computers and emulators to write new programs. Coding can have a practical purpose such as making games that can be distributed as freeware, or very rarely as commercial products. However, often the objective of such programming is the exploration of the capabilities of hardware architecture and gaining mastery in programming skills. A unique form of retro-programming is the part of the demoscene dedicated to 8-bit computers. Retro-demoscene members use vintage computers to make attractive audio-visual presentations that prove the skill of a programmer in using programming tricks and prove the capabilities of a specific hardware platform.[13] This community primarily embraces the C-64 and its main internet platform is The C-64 Scene Database).[14] For instance, one of the most celebrated C-64 demos in history, Edge of Disgrace (2008) shows a typical audio-visual aesthetics of the C-64 demoscene productions.[15] Later, we will discuss in detail the tension between ‘modern’ and ‘retro’ demoscene.
Jussi Parikka, media historian, argues that retro-cultures ‘seem to be as natural a part of the digital-culture landscape as high-definition screen technology and super-fast broadband.’[16] Retro-computing is a ubiquitous part of our contemporary digital culture. The popularity of retro-computing can be, for instance, illustrated with the omnipresence of the aesthetics of pixel-art that closely refers to the aesthetics of graphics of 8-bit computers. It may be easy to simply think about it as the next ‘vintage’ trend. However, Niemeyer offers an insight into how such seemingly trivial fashions, reveal some broader cultural currents and discontents with the present.
This is what we can superficially observe, but what is ‘hidden’ behind these longings? It would certainly be very ‘in vogue’ to ride this nostalgia wave by exclusively discussing this notion in terms of the retro styles, vintage moods and designs emerging in our environments. But nostalgia is not only a fashion or a trend. Rather, it very often expresses or hints at something more profound, as it deals with positive or negative relations to time and space. It is related to a way of living, imagining and sometimes exploiting or (re)inventing the past, present and future.[17]
There is a substantial body of work beyond Niemeyer that discuss nostalgia for older media and how such media are situated in a past-present-future continuum that can inform understandings of retro-programming.[18] This specific form of ‘nostalgia for the digital’ is built upon the ‘(re)imagining past and present.’ Such ‘(re)imagining’ includes challenging the popular imagery of modern computer technologies as better than older, ‘obsolete’ computers which were vastly slower than modern PCs.
Going back to Niemeyer’s remark, retro-programming and more broadly the whole culture of retro-computing is not only ‘nostalgia for the digital’ but also ‘nostalgia expressed via the digital.’[19] There are several forms of performing retro-programming in contemporary digital culture. The most popular platforms for sharing the retro-programming culture are private websites with available tutorials and resources, and YouTube videos that teach the basics of programming the 8-bit microcomputers. Such websites and videos are mostly created by men in their forties and fifties who personally experienced coding in the era of the 8-bit micros. Such websites include some element of personal testimonies for the ‘good old days’ and resources intended to help others, presumably younger generations, in order to stimulate their interest in programming Such tutorials provide primarily hardware reference manuals, memory maps, guidelines of handling graphics and sound programming and tutorials on programming game routines such as sprite animation. There are also two major books on retro-programming.[20] Again, such materials usually include some remarks on the author’s personal experience and the formative role of learning how to code in the 1980s in their professional careers and life projects. When it comes to the demoscene, major demoscene websites (Pouet.net) include both contemporary and retro demos, but the aforementioned CSDb website is dedicated only to the C-64 and includes a vast database of demoscene-related digital artifacts.[21] It is a primary platform where contemporary demos written with the C 64 are shared and celebrated.
Aside from internet-based media, the essential technology for the whole retro-computing culture is emulation. Small, usually freeware programs enable an accurate and convenient emulation of virtually all 8-bit computers, including obscure platforms and multiple hardware variants, on contemporary PCs. Such software is essential to accessing original programs written for those computers. For instance, one of the most popular programs that enable to have a virtual C-64 on a PC desktop is VICE (an acronym for Versatile Commodore Emulator (VICE - the Versatile Commodore Emulator).[22] A substantial effort that went into writing such emulators is an instance of digital nostalgia itself. Such emulators are essential for the growth of the popularity of retro-computing since the early 2000s. In terms of programming, they offer instant access to the original ‘welcome screens’ of 8-bit computers that enabled starting to write code just after turning on the computer.
Niemeyer summarizes major strategies used by those who perform nostalgia. ‘What is gone can only be re-enacted, repeated, reconstructed, reshown, rethought and restored by an artificial act, by mimesis.’[23] This list of different nostalgia-related strategies also summarizes what exactly those who embrace 8-bit computers as programming tools do with the past. Websites, YouTube videos, and forums dedicated to retro-programming offer technical knowledge, personal memories, elaborate claims on the technical excellence of 8-bit computers, and expressions of how these computers enabled some beneficial human-machine and social relations and how such technologies offered conditions for creativity.
The notion of restoring the past brought by Niemeyer was also used by Stefan Höltgen in the title of his edited volume SHIFT – RESTORE – ESCAPE.[24] The names of computer keys are used as a metaphor for nostalgia-related strategies in retrocomputing. For those, who are not familiar with 8-bit computers, RESTORE was a computer key used on some 8-bit computers including the C-64. Later, in Sections Two and Three, we will discuss how these three strategies are relevant to the culture of retro-programming. Such strategies can be summarized as: ‘To SHIFT,’ that is to stimulate some positive change in contemporary digital culture. ‘To RESTORE’ refers not only to restoring vintage devices but more importantly to attempts to bring back some techniques, and social and human-machine relations from the past.[25] Finally, ‘to ESCAPE’ can be interpreted as an escapist strategy of searching for solace from the dark side of contemporary digital culture.
Section Two: Confrontation of past and present in 8-bit computer programming
Sharing technical knowledge on how to write code for 8-bit computers is embedded in narratives on the nostalgic image of the past and substantial changes between past and present. The crucial element of that narrative is the claim on how both computer technologies and relations between the computer industry and computer users have evolved from the idealized past into a dystopian present.[26] Earl Carey, the author of a book on writing retro-games, notes how the contemporary computer industry hinders access to knowledge on programming, which was much more accessible in the past:
[T]here is an ever-increasing level of secrecy around today's hardware—"security by obscurity." Computer designers and manufacturers want to keep a competitive edge by making the inner workings of their hardware a closely guarded secret. When the computer industry was young, hobbyists and hackers were encouraged to experiment with computers. To that end, every single piece of information about the computer system was made public, including schematic diagrams of how the entire system was wired together! This information was often included in the Owners' Manual. Try finding it in the manual of any computer that you buy today—assuming that it even comes with a manual.[27]
Carey’s remark highlights a difference in the conditions for writing programs and more generally creative experiments with computers. Such a statement illustrates one of the central elements of nostalgia for some form of media from the past. As Niemeyer notes, those who share nostalgia for specific vintage media yearn not only for specific media artifacts such as an 8-bit computer, video-cassette recorder, or a vinyl record player but also offer elaborate discussions on how such media were ‘being interwoven with social practices as well as historical and economic (production) conditions.’[28] An essay on the legacy of the C-64 and BASIC language programming culture provides a similar narrative and praises the ‘production conditions’ offered by the C-64:
There are a few reasons Commodore 64 game dev continues to this day, including the original motivation - it remains a machine engineered to welcome its users to the world of creative coding. And while game development tools have progressed and evolved much since 1982, the Commodore 64 still offers a fantastic way to get to grips with the absolute fundamentals.[29]
This statement shows how a contemporary community of retro-programmers identify a vintage computer as a tool that still can be used to achieve a specific objective of understanding how computer architecture works and how this can be used in creative practices. Both Carey’s remark from 2005 and Freeman’s quote from 2021 reflects the continuity of retro-programming culture. They exhibit a similar confrontation of positively valued “then” and pessimistic perception of “now.” We would like to compare these claims of the past and present with the essay by Christopher Shaw and Malcolm Chase from their 1989 book, The Imagined Past: History and Nostalgia. They note that ‘a secular and linear sense of time, an apprehension of the failings of the present, and the availability of evidences of the past’ are ‘the prerequisites for a popular mood of nostalgia’[30]
Both aforementioned statements include all three prerequisites for the ‘nostalgia for the digital.’ First, there is a linear sense of time. Mainstream, that is non-retro narratives on the developments in the computer industry are examples of the history in which old ‘slow’ and ‘primitive’ computers are brought to public attention only to illustrate how we have reached the era of faster and more user-friendly computers. This is clearly an instance of the Whig history that perceives history as a progress from the “obsolete,” “primitive” and “oppressive” past to “modern” and “liberated” world. Virtually any advertisement, or a review of new computer, new processor, graphic card, a new version of a program, or a report from the Consumer Electronics Show, emphasize such progress. In contrast, the narratives shared by the retro-computing community are structured very differently. According to people engaged in retrocomputing culture, although vintage computers were slower, they offered much more opportunities for creativity. Second, the above quotes offer some insight into the apprehension of the failings of the present. The discourse of nostalgia for the digital shares a substantial body of references to the failings of contemporary digital capitalism and particularly the work conditions in the software industry.[31] The 8-bit retrocomputing culture itself already emerged in the 1990s, when 8-bit home computers became superseded by omnipresent PCs. Later, in 2000s and 2010s, it evolved into an idealized past used in the emerging critique of the contemporary world of digital technologies. Third, there is an abundance of online evidence, archives and ephemera of the past, to the extent that there is even no need to have a vintage computer to witness this history. One can run emulated games from the 8-bit era or read scanned copies of computer magazines from the 1980s easily accessible in the Archive.org collection, or any other online retro-computing collection.
Going back to Chase and Shaw, the authors note the connection between the sense of nostalgia and the notion of modernity. ‘In sociology nostalgia has always been implicit in the literature concerned with the elusive concept of modernity. Our present was unfavourably contrasted with some putative property found in the past.’[32] Retro-programming offers a specific vision of the past which was more modern than the present because, as they claim, in the 8-bit microcomputer era more people embraced computer science which allowed them to use computers for creative purposes. Here, we can see how this community produces an imagery of retro-futurism in which the past is perceived as an unfinished and abandoned project of a society where every computer user is capable of controlling this technology instead of being controlled by it.[33]
The essence of the notion of modernity that happened sometime in the past can be found in an article published by Gerald Friedland, the author of one of the major books on retro-programming on the Medium website in the ‘Young Coder’ section.[34] Friedland, with his academic credentials in computer science, is plausibly the most publically visible figure of the retro-programming community and a supporter of the ‘learn to code’ movement. Friedland’s author biography shows both his credentials and a typical personal story of a retro-programmer:
Gerald Friedland is Principal Scientist at Lawrence Livermore National Lab and Adjunct Professor at the University of California, Berkeley. Like many, he taught himself to program as a child in the 1980s with the ancient — but refreshingly straightforward — Commodore 16 [an obscure computer model from the C-64 family].[35]
This short bio also shows what one can achieve by learning to code an 8-bit computer as a child. In his article, Friedland refers to Bandersnatch (dir. David Slade 2018), an episode of Black Mirror sci-fi television. This episode, very loosely based on a real story of a highly ambitious and unfinished British computer game, is itself a piece of nostalgia for the programming culture of the 1980s.
Netflix recently released a multiple-choice movie in their Black Mirror series, called Bandersnatch. The protagonist is a teenage programmer working on a contract to deliver a video-game adaptation of a fantasy novel for an 8-bit computer in 1984. […] For me, the movie also raised another very interesting question: “How is it that teenagers were able to become professional computer game developers through self-education?” In today’s world, this would be considered an amazing accomplishment. So is there something we can learn from the history behind Bandersnatch as we work to empower the next generation in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM)?[36]
A teenager that self-educated himself in computer science and was capable of independently writing a highly successful computer game, is a central figure in the imagery of computer-related modernity of the 1980s. For instance, one of the most celebrated game programmers of the 1980s, Matthew Smith who authored highly popular ZX Spectrum games Jet Set Willy (1984) and Manic Miner (1985), represent such a figure. For his achievements, he is widely celebrated in retro-programming culture. Melanie Swalwell, in her book on writing homebrew games in the 1980s discusses in detail the realities of learning how to write games.[37]One of the interviewees from Lindsay's study explains a difference between the past and present:
A very very high percentage of all owners learned to program to at least a small degree. Practically no one who buys a PC ever learns to write programs on it.[38]
Such a statement shows how retro-programming community perceive a critical difference between past and present in terms of the technical competencies of computer users. In the final section, we will discuss how such an opinion on the change in programming competencies, another apprehension of the failings of the present, can tell us more about how retro-programmers construct their identities.[39]
Section Three: Retro-programming identities
One of the key strategies of ‘nostalgia for the digital’ is an attempt to form one’s identity in connection to the imagined identities of people from the past who creatively used digital technologies. In the case of retro-programming community, its members seek to build some connections with computer users from the 1980s. Obviously, those in their forties and fifties who were computer users in that era as children or adolescents, seek the connection with their personal past. This strategy involves highlighting one’s connection with the past and distance from the present. Going back to Niemeyer, this feature shows how nostalgia for computers of the 1980s includes ‘a longing for the human relations’ from the past.[40] Here, a ‘social relation’ refers to the identity of someone who can master computer hardware with programming techniques. Retro-programmers establish such an identity by building connections to a specific social circle that existed in the past, as well as distancing themselves from other people from the present. For example, Lindsay discusses in detail how contemporary TRS-80 users shape their identities and distance themselves from imagined ‘contemporary PC users’:
Contemporary TRS-80 users define themselves as being in resonance with the computer hobbyists who first used the TRS-80 in the 1970s and in contrast to users of current personal computers.[41]
Many of the users I interviewed portrayed the TRS-80 user as a hacker who had been at the frontier of personal computing in the 1970s and who was now at the frontier of the physical boundary of the artifact of the personal computer. Unlike users of current PC technologies, these current TRS-80 users were able to cross this physical boundary and to manipulate their machines: These days computers have been reduced to pre-packaged consumer tools, and that aspect of exploration is out of reach of many potential hobbyists.[42]
This ideal archetype of a competent programmer from the 1980s is a central figure and a point of reference in retro-programming community. Such an archetype was a male teenager, however, here, we do not discuss in detail the issue of gender in computing. We can only note that the dominance of young males in programming cultures of the 1980s has followed gendering in the field of computer science, a subject discussed by Jane Margolis and Allan Fisher.[43] Such an archetype is also a point of reference in “to RESTORE” strategy of an attempt to merge past and present. As Lindsay notes:
Thus, the TRS-80 users constructed their identities through relationships with the users representations and technologies of both the past and the present, forging links between the two times and the different computer cultures.[44]
Here Lindsay refers to a crucial element of such identity, which is a claimed ability to cross the physical boundary between human and machine. She refers to the ability to open the computer case and tinker with the hardware. Such an ability to establish a direct connection to a machine often referred to as ‘being close to the machine,’ in computer cultures equally refers to Do-it-yourself modifications of hardware and to the experience of using assembly language to program a computer.[45] This language that enables direct control over the flow of data between processor and memory was highly popular in the 1980s. But contemporarily has limited use in programming culture, for instance in programming device drivers. Carey notes how today's programmers simply had no possibility of crossing such boundaries due to modern hardware design:
With the advent of Application Programming Interfaces (APIs), such as OpenGL and DirectX, many games today do not make use of assembly language programming! Instead of writing fast screen routines and other common functions needed to create a game, most programmers use the graphic functions found in the previously mentioned APIs (DirectX and OpenGL).[46]
The necessity of using DirectX or other APIs in writing programs limits the possible creativity that comes with direct control over processor and memory. Here we bring in an introduction to a technical guide on coding demos for the C-64 that grasps the creativity, and required mastery that comes with the control over the 8-bit hardware. This is also a manifesto of the cultural values of the retro-demoscene:
That the C-64 is old and slow might not sound like much of an advantage, but when it comes to demo programming, it is. Why? It means that it's difficult to do stuff that requires lots of computations. You can't just throw CPU cycles at it, and write inefficient code. You have to think, to make it efficient. And doing really difficult things (or rather, impossible things) is what demo programming is all about. A good programmer can write a program that does something that seems very hard to do. A good demo programmer can write code that does something that is completely impossible.[47]
Such explanation is accompanied by a statement on why modern computers are not suitable for such a creative task as writing demos:
That's why it's meaningless to start writing demos on a modern computer: it's too easy to make stuff that looks impressive, it's too easy to fool people into thinking that you've done something impressive, so you really don't have the right sort of motivation to actually write good code. Instead you're pushed in another direction, towards writing large programs, which will require that you use abstraction, which probably means that you'll use some high level language, and then you're not even close to programming demos.[48]
Writing impressive demos for the C-64 that are extensively celebrated on demoparties and CSDb forums offers a form of mastery over technology. As claimed, such mastery is denied to those who code contemporary demos with the use of APIs since one can easily ‘throw a lot of CPU cycles’ to achieve impressive effects. The central conclusion of Åkerlund’s manifesto is that contemporary technologies do not offer an opportunity for forging an attractive personal identity based on mastery of creative programming techniques. The text provides an explicit statement on why vintage computers, with their severe limitations, offered a much greater opportunity for being creative. Retro-programmers argue contemporary computers, whose audio-visual content of a game or a demo can be only designed through DirectX, offer very little space for creative coding. The key element of retro-programming ideology is that contemporary computer users are distanced from their machines not only by specific technologies, such as DirectX, but more importantly by the production conditions of the contemporary digital economy.[49] Similarly, Lindsay quotes a TRS-80 user who expressed the difference between him and people from his community and ‘today’s programmers’:
These people also differentiated themselves from the programmers of today’s personal computers. Some of the TRS-80 users were there when you had to do “more with less” of the technology, and learned to use these same skills on today’s computers. One interviewee stated:
Today’s programmers are not the same caliber of people we had in my day. Today’s software is large and fat and wastes huge amounts of memory, CPU and disks for very little benefit. . . . You sit there saying “I’ve got a machine 100 times faster [than the TRS-80], with 100 times more memory, and 10,000 times more disk and IT’S SLOWER.” It makes you wonder what today’s programmers know.
This interviewee was using his knowledge of the TRS-80 to construct an identity of a “real programmer” that set him apart from today’s programmers, and even further from today’s end users.[50]
The excerpt makes a distinction between ‘real programmers’ and ‘contemporary PC users’ which corresponds with one of the central elements of nostalgia: dissatisfaction with the present. Chase and Shaw draw upon Émile Durkheim’s work to understand this. Noting that one of the reasons for embracing nostalgia is the dissatisfaction with the fact that living in the present time offers little possibility for the formation of an identity based on mastering technology. As they note, ‘To Durkheim, modern industrial society was rootless and gave its members no sense of identity and role.’[51] Learning how to program vintage computers offers such an identity while contemporary computer culture offers little possibilities for it. Such mastery, which can be demonstrated by writing attractive demos that are celebrated by other members of the community offers an attractive identity and opportunity to escape ‘the rootless modernity’ in the era of digital capitalism.
Conclusion
In our paper, we have shown how a niche community that exists in a landscape of contemporary digital culture builds a mythology of the past. As we have seen, for some people engaged in retro-programming who are in their forties and fifties, this mythology interconnects with their personal experience. But for younger people, this is a form of an ideal past they yearn for. Importantly, this mythology equally builds an ideal model of old digital technologies and the people who used them. Of course, the most widely celebrated icons of digital culture of the 1980s are computers themselves. In quotations, from testimonies of people engaged in this community we have seen how some machines such as the C-64 and TRS-80 are celebrated from the contemporary point of view. But this mythology also refers to an idealized figure of a creative teenage programmer and a specific vision of human-machine interaction.
Here, we see how digital nostalgia has been embedded in the contemporary politics of digital culture. This case study provides us with an insight into a strategy of escapism from the contemporary world. Retro-programmers note that contemporary computers, despite their supposed user-friendly graphic interfaces, alienate users. But more importantly, they yearn for a period when computer use offered an attractive identity based on mastering esoteric programming knowledge and the ability to use such knowledge in creative practices. We may read materials shared by the retro-programming community as an expression of disenchantment with contemporary digital culture. Such disenchantment refers both to the limits of creativity available for computer users and the lack of the possibilities of forming an attractive identity in an alienating ‘rootless modernity.’
Footnotes
1 Tom Lean, Electronic Dreams. How 1980s Britain Learned to Love the Computer (London: Bloomsbury Sigma, 2016); Melanie Swalwell, Homebrew Gaming and the Beginnings of Vernacular Digitality (Cambridge and London: MIT Press, 2021).
2 Joy Lisi Rankin, A People’s History of Computing in the United States (Cambridge and London: Harvard University Press, 2018), 66-105.
3 “Code’org,” https://code.org/.
4 Janet Abbate, ”Code Switch: Alternative Visions of Computer Expertise as Empowerment from the 1960s to the 2010s,” Technology and Culture 59, no. 1 (2018): 134-159.
5 Antti Silvast and Markku Reunanen, “Multiple Users, Diverse Users: Appropriation of Personal Computers by Demoscene Hackers.” in Hacking Europe. From Computer Cultures to Demoscenes, eds. Gerald Alberts, and Ruth Oldenziel (London and New York: Springer, 2014), 151-163.
6 “Farbrausch - fr-041: debris. [HD],” 2007, Youtube. Accessed 28th June 2023. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wqu_IpkOYBg
7 Katharina Niemeyer, “Digital nostalgia,” The World Association for Christian Communication website, 26 Oct. 2016, Accessed 28th June 2023.https://waccglobal.org/digital-nostalgia/. Christina Lindsay, “From the shadows: Users as designers, producers, marketers, distributors, and technical support,” in How users matter. The co-construction of users and technology, ed. Nelly Oudshoorn and Trevor Pinch (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2003), 29-50.
8 Niemeyer, “Digital nostalgia.”
9 Stefan Höltgen, ed., SHIFT – RESTORE – ESCAPE Retrocomputing und Computerarchaologie (Winnenden: CSW-Verlag, 2014).
10 Péter Kristóf Makai, “Video Games as Objects and Vehicles of Nostalgia,” Humanities 7 no. 4 (2018), https://www.mdpi.com/2076-0787/7/4/123; Jaakko Suominen, ‘The Past as the Future? Nostalgia and Retrogaming in Digital
Culture.” The Fiberculture Journal, 11 (2008), Accessed February 5, 2023. https://eleven.fibreculturejournal.org/fcj-075-the-past-as-the-future-nostalgia-and-retrogaming-in-digital-culture/.
11 Lindsay, “From the shadows.”
12 Lindsay, “From the shadows,” 46.
13 Silvast and Reunanen, “Multiple Users.”
14 The C-64 Scene Database, Accessed 1 November 2022. https://csdb.dk/.
15 “Edge of Disgrace,: 2008, The C-64 Scene Database entry, https://csdb.dk/release/?id=72550)
16 Jussi Parikka, What is Media Archaeology? (Cambridge and Malden: Polity, 2012), 3.
17 Katharina Niemeyer, “Introduction: Media and Nostalgia,” in Media and Nostalgia Yearning for the Past, Present and Future, ed. Katharina Niemeyer (Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), 2, cf. also Katharina Niemeyer, “A theoretical approach to vintage: From oenology to media,” ECSUS. European Journal of Media Studies 4, no. 2 (2015): 85-102.
18 Gil Bartholeyns, “The Instant Past: Nostalgia and Digital Retro Photography,” in Media and nostalgia: Yearning for the past, present and future, ed. Katharina Niemeyer (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), 51-69; Vera Dika, Recycled Culture in Contemporary Art and Film – the Uses of Nostalgia (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003); Ryan Lizardi, Mediated Nostalgia. Individual Memory and Contemporary Mass Media (London et al.: Lexington Books, 2015).
19 Niemeyer, “Digital nostalgia.”
20 Earl John Carey, Retro game programming unleashed for the masses (Boston: Course Technology Press, 2005); Gerald Friedland, Beginning Programming Using Retro Computing: Learn BASIC with a Commodore Emulator (New York: apres/Springer, 2019).
21 Pouet.net website, https://www.pouet.net/index.php.
22 VICE- the Versatile Commodore Emulator, Accessed 1 November 2022. https://vice-emu.sourceforge.io/.
23 Niemeyer, “Introduction,” 3.
24 Höltgen, SHIFT.
25 Niemeyer, “Digital nostalgia.”
26 Rob Kling, “Hopes and Horrors: Technological Utopianism and Anti-Utopianism in Narratives of Computerization,” in Computerization and Controversy: Value Conflicts and Social Choices, ed. Rob Kling (San Diego et al.: Academic Press, 1996 [1991]), 40-58.
27 Carey, Retro game.
28 Niemeyer, “Introduction,” 6-7.
29 Will Freeman, “Back to BASIC. Understanding the dazzling legacy of the C64,” June 16, 2021. Bitmap Books, Accessed February 5 2023.
30 Malcolm Chase and Christopher Shaw, “The dimensions of nostalgia,” in Christopher Shaw and Malcolm Chase. The imagined past. History and nostalgia (Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 1999), 4.
31 Jathan Sadowski, Too Smart. How Digital Capitalism Is Extracting Data, Controlling Our Lives, and Taking Over the World (Cambridge and London: MIT Press, 2020); Ergin Bulut, A Precarious Game. The Illusion of Dream Jobs in the Video Game Industry (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 2020).
32 Chase and Shaw, “The dimensions,” 6.
33 Elizabeth E. Guffey, Retro. The Culture of Revival (London: Reaktion Books, 2006), 152-159).
34 Gerald. Friedland, “Learning to Code in a “Retro” Programming Environment,” Medium, April 12, 2019. Accessed February 5, 2023. https://medium.com/young-coder/learning-to-code-in-a-retro-programming-environment-fb5c5982ca54
35 Friedland, “Learning to Code.”
36 Friedland, “Learning to Code.”
37 Swalwell, Homebrew Gaming.
38 Lindsay, “From the shadows,” 47.
39 Chase and Shaw, “The dimensions,” 4.
40 Niemeyer, “Digital nostalgia.”
41 Lindsay, “From the shadows,” 29.
42 Lindsay, “From the shadows,” 46.
43 Jane Margolis and Allan Fisher, Unlocking the Clubhouse. Women in Computing (Cambridge and London: MIT Press, 2002).
44 Lindsay, “From the shadows,” 47.
45 Sherry Turkle, The Second Self: Computers and the Human Spirit. (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1984).
46 Carey, Retro game.
47 Linus Åkerlund, “An Introduction to Programming C-64 Demos.” Accessed 28th June 2023. http://www.antimon.org/code/Linus/.
48 Åkerlund, “An Introduction.”
49 Sadowski, Too Smart.
50 Lindsay, “From the shadows,” 44.
51 Chase and Shaw, “The dimensions,” 7; Émile Durkheim, De la division du travail social (Paris: Alcan, 1893).
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