I think these days, our computers are used to support our other hobbies.... For example, back in the early days, I thought it was the most amazing thing in the world to be able to play maybe 30 seconds of Glenn Miller on my Atari 800, in not very great quality. But that fact that it worked at all was the deal. But now, I've got hundreds of CD's and thousands of old radio shows plus movies strored on my terrabyte HD. The computer is now a means to and end, not the end inself.
The stuff now that most resembles the old days are the Replay, natami, and things like that in other markets...
You can probably draw parallels to many new technologies... Radio for instance. When it was new, it was hot stuff, even in areas not related to it... Like "Radio Flyer" wagons, RKO "radio pictures" and such.
