Editing 768: 1996

<noinclude>:''This page refers to the comic named "1996". For comic #1996, see [[1996: Morning News]].''</noinclude>
{{comic
| number    = 768
| date      = July 19, 2010
| title     = 1996
| image     = 1996.png
| titletext = College Board issues aside, I have fond memories of TI-BASIC, writing in it a 3D graphing engine and a stock market analyzer. With enough patience, I could make anything ... but friends. (Although with my chatterbot experiments, I certainly tried.)
}}

==Explanation==
There has been a stunning amount of progress in pretty much any measurable dimension of technology since 1996. We laugh at our prior naivete, pointing out that what would be a non-functionally awful computer now was considered state of the art at that time. Likewise with a {{w|PalmPilot|Palm Pilot}}, arguably a precursor to today's omnipresent smartphones. {{w|Texas Instruments|Texas Instrument (TI)}} calculators, however, appear to have been left behind, not having made any significant advances (or price drops) since the newly discovered issues of the US computer magazine ''{{w|Computer Shopper (US magazine)|Computer Shopper}}'' were published. Thus, while we groan at how awful our state of the art technologies truly were in 1996, we are reminded that some technologies have remained in relative stasis over the years.

The title text mentions {{w|College Board}}, the organization that runs the SAT and AP tests. It alludes to the fact that College Board's practice of only allowing (or requiring) specific models is at the root of how TI can charge high prices for stagnant technology, although these days they allow numerous models including the (previously) open-source Numworks calculator.

The title text then reminds us that when they were new, TI calculators were relatively powerful tools if you knew how to use them. TI-Basic was a fairly versatile programming language that could be used to make anything from games to reference files to computational programs.

The second half of the title text is a reminder to those of us who felt like gods for knowing how to program that power comes at a price—in this case, the power to program a calculator costs [[866: Compass and Straightedge|friends]]. Since, as of this comic's publication date, no program yet devised had truly passed a Turing test, even the most sophisticated {{w|Chatterbot}} (program designed to mimic conversation) couldn't quite qualify as a friend. As of June 2014, however, [http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/jun/08/super-computer-simulates-13-year-old-boy-passes-turing-test a computer convinced 33% of the people who spoke to it that it was a human, qualifying it to pass the Turing Test]. Though some [http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/06/09/turing-test-eugene-goostman_n_5474457.html skepticism] on this point is [http://www.popsci.com/blog-network/boxplot/did-chatbot-really-pass-turing-test needed], as it only passed the University's contest, not the actual {{w|Turing test}}.

Being unable to "make" friends was also later mentioned in [[866: Compass and Straightedge]].

While many people aren't aware of them, TI ''does'' make more modern calculators in their {{w|TI-Nspire series}}, although they were introduced after this comic was published. The newest versions have color screens and (''finally!'') non-BASIC programming support through {{w|Lua (programming language)|Lua}} and {{w|Python (programming language)|Python}}. However, most K-12 schools in the US still use the TI-84 calculator series, which is based off the calculator shown in the comic. (Although it also supports Python and has color screens on the higher end models.)

==Transcript==
:[Cueball is going through a cardboard box marked "MISC", and finds a catalog. Megan looks on.]
:Cueball: Check it out - old ''Computer Shoppers!'' Wow - in 1996, $3,000 would get you a 100 MHz Pentium system with a parallel port, ''two'' serial ports, a 2MB video card, ''and'' "MS-Windows"
:Megan: ''Nice!''

:[The two are face-to-face, and they each have a separate copy of Computer Shopper.]
:Megan: And $299 would get you a Palm Pilot 100- - 16MHz, 128Kb storage, and a memo pad, calendar, and state-of-the-art address book that can store over 100 names!
:Cueball: Oooh!

:[The Cueball continues to read from his.]
:Cueball: And $110 would get you a bulky TI graphing calculator with around 10MHz CPU, 24Kb RAM, and a 96x64-pixel B/W display!
:Megan: Times sure have... ...have... uh.

:[They both put down their catalogs.]
:Cueball: Okay, what the hell, T.I.?
:Megan: Maybe they cost so much now because there's only one engineer left who remembers how to make displays ''that'' crappy.

{{comic discussion}}
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Megan]]
[[Category:Computers]]
[[Category:Engineering]]