My mama said that life is like

My mama said that life is like a floppy disk. Once you find your information, you just cannot store it all on a skinny plastic donut.

Off the top of my head, I can’t remember how much you could actually have dumped on a floppy disk, back in the day. Probably because I wasn’t old enough to know what information was. But when I looked it up, it was like 1.4 MB which couldn’t have been life changing …

But it actually was. It kick started the human addiction for information storage, which we haven’t exactly conquered, half a century after the invention of the personal computer.

When computers arrived, even the idea of a picture on a screen was reserved exclusively for the movies. Information was written only, in bright green text against black. The flashing cursor at the end of the line made you feel alive with anticipation.

The closest anyone got to fun on a screen was Pac-Man’s incessant gobbling. Or the Super Mario Brothers that I found quite sinister in my childhood, because they reminded me of little gangsters when they were really just carpenters or something, trying to save Princess Toadstool from evil King Browser in the Mushroom Kingdom.

Try telling kids today that a pinball machine could only operate two flippers, and a ball plunger. It will confirm for them why you are not qualified to help them with their homework.

#fringetheartist