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Re:Inverted computer culture: A thought experiment by actionfromafar on Monday March 06, 2023 @02:42PM (#35046551)
1 is easy to imagine - a large enough collapse that making new ones is very very hard, especially compared to scrounging and repurposing the huge amount of existing ones. Imagine a huge population decline, and search parties looking through the ruins for useful tech, like computers, decades later.

Such a society could probably make new computers, but the cost of making new, much worse specced computers, may not be cost effective for a long time as long as old computers can be found and repaired.

Edit: such a movie or novel would make for great Fallout-ish world-building. Imagine for instance a large hotel in a big city running the booking system on an old laptop in a central secure location, and new 8-bit computers used as terminals at the front desk. Public access 8-bit computer terminals at public libraries connected to copies of WikiPedia running on some old gaming rig and such things. :-)

Re:Inverted computer culture: A thought experiment by olddustytrail on Monday March 06, 2023 @03:20PM (#35047017)
No it isn't (No1 easy to imagine). Computers are only useful because we have a stable society that we can build on. Post apocalyptic societies have zero practical use for computers.
Re:Inverted computer culture: A thought experiment by TeMPOraL on Monday March 06, 2023 @03:23PM (#35047053)
Post-apocalyptic doesn't necessarily mean unstable. We weren't post-apocalyptic back in the 1930s or 1950s, and computing machines had plenty of uses already (and even earlier).
Re:Inverted computer culture: A thought experiment by DaiPlusPlus on Monday March 06, 2023 @04:46PM (#35048114)
> Post apocalyptic societies have zero practical use for computers.

Post global nuclear war reconstruction would really benefit from having even a simple spreadsheet program to aid with resource allocation, wouldn’t it?

Re:Inverted computer culture: A thought experiment by Karrot_Kream on Monday March 06, 2023 @05:33PM (#35048716)
> Whatever you do with them [computers] is automatically seen as practice of an ancient and unchanging tradition.

During a nuclear war reconstruction scenario, computing wouldn't be seen as ancient or unchanging. We'd be in a transitory period where we try and recreate computing infrastructure with what we have and the power sources we have access to. But we wouldn't develop an ancient tradition or anything.

Re:Inverted computer culture: A thought experiment by speed_spread on Monday March 06, 2023 @10:18PM (#35051125)
At lot can be done with pen and paper but if you were rebuilding civilisation from scratch I'd be be happy to have a solar powered computer holding a copy of wikipedia and heaps of documentation to help me put to use any artifacts I'd find from the old world.