>Isaac Asimov was given a TRS-80 Model II, Radio Shack's flagship computer model, in May 1981 as part of a promotional event for an article he was writing for Byte Magazine. The science fiction writer, 61, was an older man and skeptical of the newfangled machine, remarking "I'll probably never use it." The computer sat boxed in his New York City apartment for a couple of weeks until a Radio Shack employee arrived to help him set it up and tutor him on how to use it and write with Scripsit. Despite Radio Shack advertisements featuring him boasting that he had retired his typewriter from use, Asimov in reality still did most of his writing on a typewriter and only used the computer to compose rough drafts and short letters. In addition, he was wary of floppy disks and usually did not save his work, instead preferring to simply print out everything he wrote. He would say that the best part about using a computer to write was the automatic spell checker, as he was a notoriously sloppy typist.
>Asimov appeared in a wide variety of advertisements for Radio Shack for four years, plugging everything from calculators to hi fi audio equipment, until the electronics retailer retired the ad campaign in 1985.
Post this god damned picture one more god damned time and you will be god DAMNED you feel me dawg
Michael Scott
Sorry for being a zoomer, but who is this guy?
Parker Brown
Mutton McChops A prolific civil war era author who is said to have wrote the book that set the North Vs South war in place.
Bentley Baker
>"I'll probably never use it."
Truly a visionary amrite
Why none of these so called "futurists" can ever predict the future?
Luis Perez
t. guy whose only experience with floppy disks involved chink 1.44MB ones
Mason Foster
He didn't say people will never use it, he said he personally probably wouldn't and he ended up barely using it.
He was 61 at the time and computers weren't good for that many things for everyday life or even life as an author so why would he bother learning it if a typewriter could do everything he wanted to(except spellcheck)?
Xavier Foster
It wasn't until the Internet that normies really had a justification to own a computer since they realized that they could access unlimited multimedia content.
Josiah Martinez
All the same, typewriter sales started to plummet in the 80s with the event of computer word processing.
Benjamin Cox
He actually predicted the Internet/Wikipedia.
Asher Price
Bill Gates said in 1982, "We still haven't reached the point where I would give a computer to my mother."
Sebastian Smith
Arthur C. Clarke was older than Asimov and he very actively used a Kaypro II to write, even sending drafts to his publisher over the phone lines.
Aiden Bennett
The TRS-80 Model II had 8" disks; these were very reliable compared with chinkshit 3.5" floppies.
Brayden Anderson
Arthur C. Clarke predicted flat panel TVs in 1951.
Kevin Martinez
What a surprise, old people don't like change. It'll happen to you too.
Juan Flores
Brainlet detected. Science fiction isn't about predicting the future.
Owen Butler
>What a surprise, old people don't like change People like this would have been no different when they were 25. A whole lot of people are technologically inept their whole lives and learn not a single new thing in any field of knowledge after school. When you are old, you just have a slightly amped up form of the same personality traits you had as a young man.
David Cruz
On that note, Isaac Asimov also loathed sci fi movies. He said Hollywood's version of science fiction "contains very much fiction and very little science".
Liam Peterson
>guy born in 1920 >baby boomer ...
Jayden Davis
The Model II was a good machine for its time--very solid and well built. A lot of them were used until Windows 3.x.
Leo Foster
He was a sci-fi writer and a futurist, but he was also a known luddite.
Blake Martinez
Like the other guy said, Arthur C. Clarke was older than him and was much more avid about computers.
Justin Perez
In the early 80s, there was a flood of "turnkey" computers like the Kaypro II aimed at normies who wanted a basic productivity machine, but it was still too early for the things to be a true appliance similar to a microwave or a refrigerator. If you read the user's manual for the things, it was still very geeky and talked a lot about memory addresses and configuring serial ports and stuff like that.
Parker Garcia
> anyone you don't like is a boomer, regardless of age
kind of glad we've moved on from "cuck". place sounded like a chicken run at times.
William Long
Edward Elmer Smith predicted the visiray in 1922.
Landon Anderson
>chicken run I never liked that movie anyway.
Camden Clark
Harlen Ellison considered himself a futurist but was almost vehemently opposed to the Internet. He considered letting anyone having a publishing platform to be irresponsible because of the lack of editorial control.
I personally believe it's because he fought so hard in the 1950s and 60s to get published and to establish his name, that he resented anyone now being able to post their writing without having to sacrifice as much as he did for it.
Landon Powell
>kind of glad we've moved on from "cuck". place sounded like a chicken run at times
Don't know about here on Jow Forums, but 'cuck' is still highly relevant. Completely different meaning than boomer.
Jayden Diaz
I recall that Gene Roddenberry used a custom-built CP/M machine to write TNG scripts with. They had a difficult time retrieving and archiving documents from his old floppies after he died because of the machine not being a prebuilt like a Kaypro.
As explained in here, earlier Model IIs required a terminating resistor pack for the external floppy connector. This was a well-meaning idea so you didn't have to pull the cover off every time you connected or disconnected the external drive module, but people kept losing theirs and whining that their machines wouldn't work, so this was changed to have a normal resistor pack on the drive PCB.
Asimov got his Model II in 81 so it was probably the revised version that didn't need the resistor pack. Which was good. He wasn't computer savvy as it was and this likely would have just caused him more trouble.
Carson Long
pretty sure he's been posting videos of him talking about random topics somewhat recently though, so he may have softened a bit that's not telling much but figured I'd point it out
