I'm relatively new to the Amiga world, but from what I've heard so far, things used to be quite different in the hobby of computing.
Rather than purchasing from poorly-trained people who know nothing about technology doing sales at a big-box store, one went to local computer stores where one could talk for hours to people who knew what they were doing and could answer nearly any question one would have.
Rather than there only being one primary architecture (x86), there were a variety of different computing standards and architectures. Commodore, Radio Shack, Kaypro, Apple, IBM, and TI all had their own computer systems.
The hobby also seems to have been more alive than it is today. While computers are more ubiquitous now than ever, it seems that the computing world in the early-90s had a higher proportion (or even number, for that matter) of hobbyists. Any given town would have multiple BBSes, and computing magazines and DIY-modifications (which people could purchase parts for from Radio Shack, which is now essentially a glorified cell-phone store) were popular.
It even appears that programming used to be something much more common than it is today, as computer books written in the 80s and 90s focus a lot more on programming than do today's.
Simply flipping through an old Amiga magazine shows all of this, with programming articles and all sorts of hardware for sale, many of which required soldering and electronics knowledge to install. Today's computing magazines mostly have articles about how to use Windows features. If one opens a gaming magazine (not many are PC-focused anymore), there's nothing about programming.
It just seems that the "magic" of computing has disappeared. Being born at the tail end of this, I was only able to witness a small amount of it, but it was still there; I remember my first computer being bought out of a computer store that was basically in a garage.
So, what happened to the hobby of computing? When did all of the small computer stores close down, the alternative systems (such as the Amiga) die out, and the magazines stop printing? I mean, we're still here, but why aren't there more of us? What happened to make people no longer become interested in computers, but simply treat them as another appliance?
Or, has it always been this way, and some people on these forums happen to view the past through rose-colored glasses?
(Sorry if this isn't directly Amiga-related, but it does relate to the hobby of retrocomputing and to the values that the Amiga community appears to hold as a whole.)
