Word: hobbyists
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...experiments are successful, Clemmons says, she wants to demonstrate her theory on a grander stage: in the shadow of the Giza pyramids outside Cairo, in what she envisions as the most notable kite flight since Ben Franklin's. In the meantime, Clemmons is taken with the idea that a hobbyist like herself might somehow scoop all the pyramid experts. "Other research expeditions had a bunch of men pushing and pulling," she says. "Mine will be me and my girlfriends with kites and a pack of beer, sitting in lawn chairs, waiting for the wind to kick...
Thibodeaux is what you'd call a computer hobbyist, a techno-geek of the highest order--not like the average consumer. There are a lot more of those: people who like the idea of a home computer network but wouldn't want to spend all their spare time (or even one Saturday) reading technical manuals, shopping for parts, reconfiguring hard drives and rewiring the house. If you wanted to network a few PCs a few months ago, you really had to be a Todd Thibodeaux to pull it off--or spend thousands of dollars hiring professionals...
...been read as comments on the duke's relaxations. Jupiter, Mercury, and Virtue, circa 1523-24, is Dosso's praise of painting. He translates it to Parnassus, where the god Jupiter sits before a canvas, his administrative thunderbolt laid aside at his feet. Jupiter is painting butterflies--a divine hobbyist. On the right is a figure of Virtue, who has come to complain about the indignities she has had to suffer in the world below. Between them sits Mercury, a finger to his lips, telling her, in effect, to shut up and back off: Jupiter is too busy painting...
...long last, however, one of the key visions of the early days of hobbyist computing--home banking--is taking off. Forget those annoying trips to the local Cambridge Savings Bank to check balances; no more searching for stamps. After years of false starts, home banking via personal computer (PC) is becoming a major new use for home computers...
Case's own tastes were going digital. He bought a Kaypro, a clunky home computer connected to a snail-paced modem. Even for a hobbyist, the machine was a nightmare--hard to set up, impossible to maintain, boring to use. But the modem was a revelation. As he connected to early online services such as CompuServe and the Source, Case felt the electronic rapture that would one day seduce millions of AOL users: "There was something magical about the notion of sitting in Wichita and talking to the world...