Tech history Memes

Posts tagged with Tech history

Meanwhile In The 80's

Meanwhile In The 80's
Back when computer mice were being invented, someone in a boardroom had to stand up and pitch the name. The excitement was real—until someone clarified they weren't naming it after the biological swimmers. The deflation is palpable. Fun fact: The computer mouse was actually invented in 1964 by Doug Engelbart, and it got its name because the tail-like cable coming out the back made it look like a rodent. Simple times, simple naming conventions. No focus groups, no A/B testing, just "looks like mouse, call it mouse." Meanwhile, modern developers spend three weeks bikeshedding whether to call a variable userData or userInfo .

How Did He Write The Linux Kernel Without ChatGPT, Starbucks And GitHub

How Did He Write The Linux Kernel Without ChatGPT, Starbucks And GitHub
Linus Torvalds, the mythical creature who wrote an entire operating system without once asking ChatGPT to "explain pointers in C" or pushing broken code at 4:59pm on a Friday. Legend has it he didn't even need a $7 latte to debug kernel panics. Just pure Finnish sisu, a text editor, and the audacity to email people when their code was garbage. Modern devs looking at this like archaeologists discovering someone built the pyramids without Stack Overflow.

Ancient IBM Wisdom That The Bosses Just Straight Up Promptly Forgot

Ancient IBM Wisdom That The Bosses Just Straight Up Promptly Forgot
Ah, the ancient scrolls of IBM wisdom. Back when computers were the size of rooms and management actually understood their limitations. Fast forward to 2023: "Let's have the AI make all our business decisions!" Meanwhile, when something breaks, it's still the human's fault. Funny how we've gone from "computers shouldn't make decisions" to "the algorithm said we should fire 30% of staff, so..." I'm sure this sign is framed right next to the "THINK" posters in IBM's museum of ignored advice.

Modern Problems Require Modern Hammers

Modern Problems Require Modern Hammers
The evolution of Windows is perfectly represented by these increasingly ridiculous hammers. Started with a primitive rock in 3.1, gradually morphed into something resembling an actual tool by XP, then completely lost the plot with each new version. By Windows 10, Microsoft apparently decided what users really needed was a bizarre multi-headed monstrosity that looks like it escaped from a hardware store fever dream. And Windows 11? That's just Windows 10's hammer after it discovered anime and cyberpunk aesthetics. The irony is that despite all this "innovation," most of us still just need to pound in a nail. But hey, at least that Windows 11 hammer can probably run Crysis while it's breaking your thumb.

Internet Explorer Vs. Murder Rate

Internet Explorer Vs. Murder Rate
Behold, the most compelling evidence that Internet Explorer was literally killing people. As IE's market share dropped from 2006 to 2011, so did the murder rate! This is what statisticians call "correlation without causation" - or what I call "the perfect excuse to uninstall IE from your grandparents' computer." Maybe people were just less murderous when they weren't waiting 45 seconds for a webpage to load. Or perhaps Firefox and Chrome were secretly running crime prevention programs in the background.

History Doesn't Repeat, But AI Sure Does Rhyme

History Doesn't Repeat, But AI Sure Does Rhyme
The tech industry's collective amnesia is truly spectacular. First, we survived the video game crash of '83, then the dot-com implosion, followed by crypto's rollercoaster of disappointment. Now we're watching the AI hype train barrel toward the same cliff while techbros insist "but this time it's different because GPT-5 and 6!" It's like watching someone confidently build a sandcastle below the tide line for the fourth time. History doesn't repeat itself, but it sure does rhyme... with a neural network-generated beat drop.

Bloat Is Goat

Bloat Is Goat
The evolution of programming efficiency is hilariously tragic. In 1975, Chad programmers hand-optimized machine code to squeeze games into kilobytes. By 2000, we'd accepted some bloat for productivity with high-level languages. Fast forward to 2025, and we've got "programmers" creating calculator apps that consume 1GB of RAM because they've stuffed 69 frameworks into an Electron wrapper. Meanwhile, they're busy impressing AI girlfriends while Microsoft casually commits open-source theft. We went from calculating trajectories to the moon on 4KB of RAM to needing 16GB just to run VS Code without crashing. Progress™

Developers Developers Developers AI-AI-AI

Developers Developers Developers AI-AI-AI
The corporate tech evolution in one image! On the left, we have Steve Ballmer's infamous sweaty "DEVELOPERS!" chant from 2000—back when human coders were the golden ticket to success. Fast forward to 2023, and CEOs are now calmly announcing how AI will "revolutionize our lives" while simultaneously telling HR to fire thousands of the same developers they once desperately needed. The tech industry's relationship status with developers: "It's complicated." Yesterday's rockstars are today's budget line items. Nothing says "thanks for building our trillion-dollar empires" quite like being replaced by the very tools you created.

The Myth Of The Good Tech Giant

The Myth Of The Good Tech Giant
That blue paperclip isn't offering to help with your Word document. It's the tech industry admitting what we all suspected - they'd have started harvesting your data decades earlier if they'd only thought of it. Remember when privacy was just something we had instead of something we clicked "Agree" to surrender? Those were the days... before every app needed to know your location to tell you the weather outside your window.

Feel Old Yet?

Feel Old Yet?
Remember when "burning a CD" meant laser-etching data onto a shiny disc instead of committing arson? Nothing makes you feel like a digital fossil quite like explaining to Gen Z that we once had to wait 20 minutes to copy Linkin Park's "Hybrid Theory" onto a circular piece of plastic that would skip if you breathed on it wrong. And no, you couldn't just "AirDrop" it—you had to physically hand someone your mix like a technological caveman. Those were dark times... with progress bars.

How The Tables Have Turned

How The Tables Have Turned
30 years and the tables have turned! In 1994, Windows users were the serious business types while Linux nerds were the smug outsiders. Fast forward to 2024, and suddenly Linux is the sensible choice for actual work while Windows users are busy rebooting after another forced update. Nothing says "technological evolution" quite like watching Microsoft slowly transform their OS into what looks like a billboard with occasional computing features. The irony is delicious – and completely lost on anyone still waiting for their Windows 11 widgets to load.

He Never Asked For My Data

He Never Asked For My Data
OMG, the AUDACITY of people romanticizing Clippy in 2023! 💅 That paperclip assistant from Microsoft Office was literally THE ORIGINAL PRIVACY INVADER before it was cool! While we're all losing our minds about apps tracking our every move, Clippy was just sitting there, innocently bouncing around our Word documents, NOT asking for our age, NOT canceling our perpetual licenses, and NOT demanding our location. THE HORROR! A digital assistant that just... helped?! Without stealing our data?! What a concept! *dramatically faints onto keyboard*