Retro Tech Tuesday: Think You Can Run a Computer?

Today we buy a computer, rip it out of the box, and start using it immediately. But let's turn back the clock to 1964. Several trucks have just unloaded an IBM 360 mainframe with its 4K (as in kilobytes) of internal memory at your house (if you happened to live at NASA). Before you can fire up the computer, get your film projector ready for the.. training film. Through the magic of YouTube, here's a look at the first few minutes of the IBM 360 "Control Program of Operation" film. It's wild to see the juxtaposition of a man at a chalkboard explaining how something as high tech as a computer works. Also note the early use of "bricks and mortar" to reference how the different layers of programming work together:

Retro Tech Tuesday: Robbie Bach and the Xbox 360

We're not setting the wayback machine very far for this week's retro tech voyage. No, we're just headed back to the summer of 2005 as then-chief of Microsoft's Xbox, Robbie Bach (Now in charge of all entertainment devices at Microsoft) laid out the future for the soon-to-launch console. Would people pay to attend tournaments to watch others play games? What other prophecies were right and wrong? Here's a look: