Like you, I have many and varied interests. If you happen to run across any we share, cool. I have heard from a few of you, some of whom I admire for the direction your life took and succeeded at where I have failed (or am still struggling), and others for their conviction and stick-to-it-iveness. What it all boils down to is your life's passions. Here are some of mine..
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My biggest passion is animation. I want to make my own animated feature film someday. I design websites and always try to include my own special animated touch at no charge. It takes forever to do a good animation, and it's really tough to do the type of animation I love best for the web. It is a lot easier on an Amiga, but it still takes quite awhile, OK? ;-)
The hard part about creating on the web is that so may people are tied to a fixed 256 color palette (not Amigans, thank God), of which only 216 are shared between the dominating platforms. That is quite a boundry most people have drawn for not just themselves, but everyone else as well when majority rules.
Someday I hope to show up at the local TV station and tell them they have the exclusive Sioux Falls premier of my professional animated half hour video for free just so I can see if anyone likes it. Who knows, maybe one day I will even move on to bigger and better things.
I do love the web. I love to create for it, although bandwidth makes the whole process a chore. It's very limiting. Especially when you have an artist's heart and consider yourself a purist. And the price of the technology is simply outrageous. My biggest gripe about it is that it's clumsy and awkward. Microsoft wants to own it, and only develops for a couple platforms because there isn't any money in any of the others. This alienates anyone who choses another platform (i.e.: me, because the Pentium still lacks animation capabilities and the Mac isn't close to reliable, among other things). That isn't what the internet was about. It was created to share information, research, data, and expidite the exchange of ideas. I don't see Microsoft sharing anything unless you have a PC, and even then there are much grander motivations involved.
Before you shoot me down for being unique and thinking different, realize that I have my own individual interests, as do you. We are both entitled to them. If all you do is business reports you probably think the Pentium is just what you need, and I am not denying that it may be right for you if you think that is the answer, but realize that because I design web sites, do animations and videography, and internet like crazy running several working applications at once, it would be impossible for me to do the exact same things on any priced home workstation.
Out here on the internet I am in a minority. No, I am a white male in good health (so far as I know), but I am an Amiga user in a sea of PCs. I am also a Mac user (as little as possible). And quite plainly, the world wide web is snubbing it's nose at me. Geocities refuses to support any Amiga standard file formats and refuses to allow me to support my causes (like supporting the Amiga with the Amiga Web Directory). This is actually internet illegal; to deny or restrict access to another internet document. And all I am doing is downloading a tiny (8k or usually alot less) banner promoting one of my favorite passions so that I as well as other users can find other Amiga sites on the net. Amigans never would have survived Commodore's stupidity if it wasn't for connectivity to the internet.
In the meantime, there is no denying that documents should remain the property of their rightful owner and AOL thinks it can copyright all email? Get a grip, people. Money is corrupting the internet. That is one extremely sad reality, the other is that we are letting them do it.
Don't get me wrong, I love the technology. I wouldn't own an Amiga if it wasn't for my love of it's technology, it's cool and stable OS is a huge bonus. If HDTV is as good as it should be and computer technology marries with it as fast as it has been, the possibilities are limitless. It's about time technology caught up with us a tiny bit. I hope HDTV's 3 screens wide and 2 screens tall, but compacted into a tighter, finer, computer-monitor-like resolution. I've been sick of looking at a snowy, flickery pictures on brand new state-of-the-art televisions for the past 25 years. The real reason I became a videographer is that film is way too expensive. Even broadcast 'quality' video has been a joke for quite some time.
The world is moving into a different future that has been held back well too long. The opportunities are enormous for the people with the insight to embrace it and use it. The things they will be capable of will astound me. And it will be used in so many ways, heh, heh, Microsoft's efforts to date will pale in comparison. But I do get a sick feeling when people look up to conglomerates with no sense of individualism or sense of passion.
"At what price freedom?" At what price will we find this technology, though? Today, a professional workstation costs as much as a fine automobile. How will the youth of today or tomarrow be able to cope with the monsterously outrageous and overpriced burdens of keeping on top of technology just to stay bug-free and in the game? And the hardware is the cheap part.
Right now is the wrong time to buy a computer. The Pentium and P2 will be obselete by the end of the year (Intel won't tell you right now). The PPC should hit 500mhz soon. Bus speeds are incredibley sluggish on any home platform. The Mac won't multitask one iotta until late 1998. BeOS is incomplete and has no apps yet. The 68060 Amiga is a tiny bit underpowered, very over priced, and a CHRP PPC version will soon be offered by more than one company.
Then there is the descrimination. Microsoft has repeatedly announced that it won't support the Amiga because there's no money in it and they don't know how to code without limitless power and resources (they announced that the Amiga was too underpowered to run their applications, yet Amiga developers are delivering comparable product on much smaller budgets). Adobe has ported nearly all products to nearly all platforms except the Amiga while they sit on the 680X0 version code of every Mac application which only needs to be redressed in Amiga clothes and recompiled (I do run all the Adobe products on my Amiga at full throttle, but I have to emulate that crappy MacOS to do it).
You think I am talking about the Amiga here, don't you? Well, I'm not. I know the Amiga, so I am armed with some great examples, but that Pentium on your desk is going to be obselete next year. And although you will get some support for awhile, you will soon realize that you need a firewire port upgrade to keep it alive or need a fiber optic network server to utilize revolutionary new data cubes that "can't" fail. We will talk with light.
Your computer will one day be a part of the house. It will control your enviroment, flick on the lights, turn on it's tube and let you surf the net legibly from 6 feet away in a window over several other windows of digitally broadcasted programs. Windows will be round or hexagonal if you want them that way. And if you think that is all you are shortsighted. Everyone will be wired to the net, either through cable, dedicated line, or by satelite. Holographic projection will become a mastered art. One day there will even be a nerd holiday, "virtuality" (or "cyberius"). ;-)
Look at that, you have stumbled into my passions. Where did that list of interests go? You must like to read. I like to write. My, aren't we getting along famously? ;-)
Eventually, someone will discover the other 3 dimensions and it will all start all over again.
This page written on May 14th, 1997 by dp for the Ghostmachine website. © Doug Peters 1997.