Philosophical Question - Amiguing

[agami]

Answer is:
Nostalgia. Pure, unadulterated, and self-indulgent.
Now, others will state all sorts of  "reasons" like "it's a hobby" or "the other systems don't allow me to tinker", but behind it all is just nostalgia.

If you look at the 'distribution of innovation' model, the last phase/group is referred to as Laggards, and in the late '90s and early 2000s Amiga users would have fallen in this category, but we are way past this point. Whilst our ranks have a few detractors we are mostly in it for the nostalgia. On a daily basis we will use Windows/Linux/Mac OS X computers, and tablets and smartphones and games consoles and other useful gadgets, we have an Amiga to remind us of another time when things were simpler and we were part of the few that 'got it'. Like a weirdly functional photograph or a mosquito in amber that can still fly around.

I too am one of these, I have a fully functional OS3.9 A1200 w/040. Alas, it has more in common with a typewriter than a contemporary computing device. But that's a whole other philosophical topic.

[agami]

Sure it is... for you, and you can't speak for everyone.

Can you please stop speaking for everyone?

What an absolute nonsense :rolleyes:

Sure I can, I am eminently qualified to do so and am often asked to do just that.
My qualifications aside, the defensive responses you and others have made in response to the original philosophical question are revealing enough, but here is some science to go with what I'm stating:

If you, myself, or any other Amiga user who originally used an Amiga in the late '80s and early '90s were placed in an FMRI and then you, me, or any of them engaged in their favourite use of the Amiga i.e. playing a game, modifying the GUI/MUI, coding; the areas of the brain that would light up would be the same as those relating to nostalgia.

There have been numerous neurological and psychological experiments done on the subject of nostalgia, by all means do your own research to better inform yourself.

[agami]

Really? Do tell! Where does one go to get a degree in Speaking for Absolutely Goddam Everyone?

Political Sciences at pretty much any university.

But tell me, what about those of us who didn't use an Amiga way back when? Obviously we can't have the level of nostalgia you're implying here, since we don't have a history with it.

Nostalgia only applies to something experienced in the past, so obviously a person who gets on an Amiga today for the first time cannot be nostalgic. That wasn't what the original question was about.

And I'd like to know by what line of reasoning nostalgia and knowingly-considered positive assessments are mutually exclusive, anyway.

One is related to sense memory and the other isn't.

[agami]

I didn't ask what the difference was, I asked where this idea that you can't have nostalgic fondness for something and at the same time have a conscious, reasoned appreciation for it comes from.

It has been conclusively proven that in the presence of sense memory surrounding a subject matter, be it positive or negative, a person can never form an objective assessment related to the same subject matter. It has to do with how the amygdala consolidates emotion originating in the limbic brain with other related aspects from higher level brain functions into the hippocampus.

The limbic brain is very simple, there aren't multiple areas for the different kinds of love one may feel i.e. love of a partner, love of a child, love of a friend or family member, love of a pet, or love of inanimate objects. All those hit the same area. Of course with differing intensity and also filtered through some of the higher brains to provide context. Same goes for dislike or hate. And with animals and inanimate objects like a car or a computer we assist this emotional bond through anthropomorphism.

We can certainly discuss things objectively and we can produce written materials that read objectively, when we think about them in absence of any emotional context. But the instant we start adding adjectives describing emotions like 'I enjoy' or 'it's fun', we are automatically applying a subjective view.

[agami]

I'd really like to get back to the original question:

Why do we(1) keep trying to cultivate the Amiga (?)...

We
hbarcellos throws his lot in with the Amiga people. He is not asking 'Why do I?' or 'Why do you?', his asking why this tribe of ours, why we as a group?

Keep Trying
Something done over and over. It's not a single attempt, it's not why try now, but rather the enduring tries and retries.

The definition of stupidity is to repeat the same action and expecting a different result. Over the decades we have made differing attempts but expected the same result i.e. the return of the Amiga as a viable platform. What do we call that?

Cultivate
The essence of the question. It singles out those who are toiling in the proverbial fields. It does not include people who have been exposed to the Amiga recently, it's not about how my sisters played SuperFrog and liked it. They're not going around trying to get their friends to play the game. Memetically these individuals are infertile grounds. Just like none of us are cultivating the use of an abacus. We may find it interesting, and we may even discover some of its advantages for certain types of calculations, but in the end we go back to a digital calculator or a software facsimile thereof.

So the phrasing of the question implies a time period beyond the recent, an ongoing journey, a group behaviour, and the effort of cultivating specific ideas and ideals. Everywhere this kind of group behaviour is encountered the main driving emotion is always nostalgia. Physical books vs. digital books. Handwritten letters vs. email.

This is not a bad thing, only those of us lucky enough to be alive in the time of the Amiga can be nostalgic about it. And one day in the future when we've all 'kicked the bucket', people will be able to see an Amiga in a computer or technology museum, and perhaps read books about the passion some groups of people had towards some of the early computing platforms and no doubt see it as completely irrational.