A core conversation that I've been having lately starts like this:

What are computers for?

And I have a decent set of answers for that.

Computers are for:

- Creation
- Consumption
- Communication

The specifics vary, and there's also a "meta" category for the things that we do to manage computers, but most of what I do on a computer boils down to one of those things.

I write, I record music, I make videos, I write code.

I watch TV, I listen to music, I play games.

I post on the fediverse, I publish my blog, I send emails, I use an instant messenger.

Creation (and editing and remixing)
Consumption (and cataloguing and organizing and sorting)
Communication (and publication)

There are certain kinds of creation, consumption, and communication that are wholly modern, that only work in a fully graphical environment with low latency, high bandwidth broadband.

I can't really edit photos on my #zinestation because it's a 386 (or occasionally a 486) with a monochrome screen and 4MB or 8MB of RAM.

Video production is right out! The thing doesn't even have a sound card, for me to attempt working with audio.

On the other hand, I use it to write nearly every episode of Expedition Sasquatch. I send most of my personal emails from that box, and I have (through various tricks) gotten it on the fediverse. I don't post much from the zinestation anymore, but I used to read and post from it and my palm pilots often enough (with tricks! It's all tricks! We'll get there.)

(I mean, yeas. I can actually edit photos. It's slow, but I can convert a jpg or a png down to an appropriate resolution bitmap and edit it in MS-Paint.

If I *need* to produce a graphic on my zinestation, I can totally do it! I do desktop publishing on it, with clipart, all the time.

But I'm not going to take a picture, load it in to a photo editor, and make adjustments to it, or even really have a good way to view it. That would be absurd right?

(I have a sony Mavica. I have a floppy drive for my zinestation. I can take a photo on the mavica and open it in a dedicated photo editor on the zinestation 486 and edit it just fine, and it works very well and is a pleasant experience aside from the fact that it's a monochrome screen and it's a little on the slow side. I can totally edit photos on this thing, as long as I adjust my definition of photo down to something that it can handle. And that's the point. It's all tricks.)

But still, video editing is right out, right? No one was Producing videos on a 486?

This is actually not true! The #zinestation486 will run Theatrix hollywood, which is a silly animation program. It's not a great experience, but I can Produce video on this hardware. This is also a trick!

Theatrix hollywood is actually a really neat little piece of fake animation software. There were others too! Most of the rest of them were mostly used for GIFs, but you could do something bigger if you really wanted! You just have to adjust your expectations to the limitations of the hardware and software with which you are working. It's all tricks.

But computers are tricks, and I think that will become more apparent as I continue this thread.)