So this is going to be a small rant. Maybe  it is because I am old and actually have experienced many of these “bad” interfaces. But that they are bad is not really the point, yeah the point is to show how “far” we have come. Well’ there’s my problem. That statement doesn’t mean anything. How far we have come in 30 years? In interface design? That doesn’t even mean a thing. It is trying to make everything regarding social medias like the all time most important thing in the world. It is not. You should just see these videos as something a bit interesting. And if this really blows your mind, then you need to get out more, or just spend way less time with social media things.

Because you know what? Everything changes, especially in the digital world, nothing is eternal, of course it is going to change and or disappear.

I also would argue that they could have been made much better and with way better accuracy. They are actually not that serious, I guess that is not the point, but for a title suggesting that HUMANITY HAS COME SO FUCKING FAR. Maybe the videos should have been a tad bit more accurate? Oh well.

Here is the original post from io9. *Pausing for readers to vomit a bit in their mouth in response to the ridiculous title of the article* ….

….

Ok, you are back?

Perfect.

I do love me some retro stuff and homages to retro stuff. Maybe my problem here is that they try to make everything really important, and then they joke it away…. where the whole thing wasn’t really that important to begin with.

So here goes:

This is one that is pretty annoying to watch. My problem here is that it just feels like an overly elaborate diss towards Facebook. Where did the “importance” eluded to from the title of the io9 article go? If this would be more of an infomercial done in the old days, sure it would have been cringey, but that would have been more true to the message here.

This one is actually ok, maybe it is because they don’t try to diss the service but actually try to show how it would have been done in DOS, with some added flare of fun stuff.

And we’re back to the annoying stuff. Much because of the bad voice “acting” I guess. The information in it is pretty ok, it would actually be that much of a hassle in the 80’s to get Instagram to work any way near to how it is working today.

Yeah, this one is ok. I guess the DOS ones are harder to fuck up?

Well, this one simply just sucks. The voice is terrible and it would never have been done like that on TV shopping channels. Yeah sure, Pinterest really is worthless, but this video is just bad, not funny and not informative. So nothing gained here.

This one is ok but the problem for me here is that… Skype is a relative new thing that really isn’t the pioneers of this technology. There have been many softwares and clients that did just this before Skype. Skype just happened to do it a bit better (or smarter?) and got bought up by Microsoft. So they make out that Skype is really really important. Don’t get me wrong though, I really like Skype. But I guess some people might see a service as the only one of its kind. But yes, sound couldn’t really be compressed well in the 80’s, it did sound like that, so they got that one right.

This one is actually really good and accurate. This is actually how it would have looked and sounded. And I would have been SO STOKED TO HAVE THIS BACK THEN.

I like this one as well 🙂

I would have loved this as well! I did really like Encarta 95. Encyclopedias was the shit back in the 90’s, they had minigames.

And then we have the last annoying one.

This is just an elaborate belittling or degrading of Youtube. Not even funny.

Ok, so, if you really are interested in old stuff. Maybe something like this, from Engadet is more fulfilling. It is mostly pictures, but there are links to the exhibition and interactive stuff and community stuff.

Or if you just want quality cringey stuff, head over to EVERYTHING IS TERRIBLE where everything is really terrible and actually way more accurate of the 90’s! 😀

See you! ~~