foolZONE Special Reports for April 1, 2006

ByteRevels 2006: A Report on the Annual Moot of the Society for Computing Anachronism
by Amiga Tandy, Subculture Correspondent, foolZONE

With dot-matrix banners aflutter and a sense of anticipation in the air, members of the SCA (Society for Computing Anachronism) met during the Spring Equinox weekend in a deserted business park on Lawrence Expressway, coming together for their traditional Tourney and Moot. This year's gathering, Byte Revels 2006 - informally dubbed the "ReBoot Moot" among SCA regulars - marks the 27th such meeting since the supposed 1979 introduction of the "first" laptop computer.

Sporting painters' pants and Gunne Sax dresses, clogs and Frye boots, peasant blouses and even the occasional polyester leisure suit, these enthusiastic re-enactors came from far and wide to relive the heyday of punch-card programming, monochrome CRTs, and tape backup.

Opening the festivities to the traditional "William Tell Overture" was the traditional Apple Shooting, in which archers competed to precisely shoot an Apple IIe off the head of a reveler in traditional Geek Garb. This year's Champion, Wozniak the Bold, uttered his famous binary war cry as retiring Queen Commodoria of DiskCache presented him with the ceremonial trophy hand-crafted from obsolete modems.

Another highlight of Byte Revels was the Tourney, this year hotly contested between two regional Knights, Sir Syquest of the Fractals and Sir Dysan of the Flexible Floppy. Sir Syquest had an early lead as his interlocking armored disk drives handily absorbed all the data Sir Dysan could command; however, he later stumbled as Sir Dysan demonstrated greater ease of transportation, flinging his layers of 5.25" armor like deadly frisbees. The battle ultimately had to be halted when both combatants simultaneously produced incompatible device drivers, bringing the action to an abrupt standstill. Their seconds, Iwanna MacIpod and XP O'Linux, were called to the field and were still competing in the spreadsheet analysis event at this writing, grappling intently with obscure and archaic B-Calc formulae.

What brings these aficionados of the arcane to events like this? I spoke with the group's national Herald Peremptory, Gate Jobbs (none of the other participants was willing to acknowledge my presence, since I was not sufficiently "period" in dress or lingo: indeed, there was nary a BlackBerry to be seen at the event, save in the delicious pies served at the banquet following the Phish and Chips). Huddled amidst the unusually harsh fluorescent lighting and orange-and-brown cubicles brought in to give the event its authentic ambience, Jobbs explained.

"All the challenge is gone from modern computing," lamented Jobbs. "Instant help, infobases, %$&@# spell-checkers and auto-formatters, even that damned little paperclip guy - there is someone or something holding your hand every moment you spend at the keyboard and screen. Our involvement in the SCA allows us to hearken back to a simpler time; a time when geeks were geeks and suits were suits, and never the twain did meet; a time when working from the C-prompt was the measure of the man. Every little thing we do to keep those glory days alive helps to ensure that although the rest of the world may march blissfully along to an auto-completing tune, we few, we happy few, will remain the only ones able to recover that deleted file from a disk drive at the critical time. We figure it's worth a few weekends in 'fros, platform shoes and bell-bottoms."

As he boogied away to a "Pong" tournament following our conversation, I had to wonder whether or not he and the rest of this far-out crowd from an era far, far away…might not just be right.

Learn more here about the SCA.