Benj Writes Tech History at Ars Technica

Wednesday, May 3rd, 2023

A TRS-80 Model 100 in front of an explosive, fiery background.

In August 2022, I joined up with Ars Technica as their AI and Machine Learning Reporter. Of course, even while documenting one of the wildest cutting-edge stories in tech at the moment, my heart never strays far from the subject of this site: vintage technology and the history behind it.

In between writing about AI at Ars over the past 8+ months, I’ve had the chance to occasionally write a piece about tech history or nostalgia (23 in total so far). To capture them all in one place, I’ve created a tag called “retrotech” for all of those articles at Ars. To check them out, click this link.

Here’s a fun one I did not too long ago: Egad! 7 key British PCs of the 1980s Americans might have missed.

Sinclair ZX Spectrum ad excerptSo if you’re interested, keep an eye on the “retrotech” tag and follow along there. In a way, it’s kind of an extension of what I did on Vintage Computing and Gaming back in the day, albeit this time I make a full-time living and get health benefits. That’s quite an upgrade!

As I usually mention in posts on here for the past few years, I’m sorry that I’ve let VC&G wither with neglect. I’m not shutting it down since there is so much historically valuable content here (especially interviews and comments), and our Patreon supporters keep these archives online. Thanks for your continued support over the past 18 years!

P.S. Did you see this piece that lists out all of the tech history work I did at How-To Geek between 2020 and 2022? Pretty cool.

[ Tech Songs ] Baked at Atari

Monday, June 20th, 2016

Benj Edwards Tech Songs Album Cover

Some of you may recall that from 2002-2005, I ran a band/website called Request-A-Song.com. Well, since March of this year, I’ve been publishing music online again as part of a musical project I call Tech Songs.

Tech Songs, for me, is essentially a writing prompt for music — a concept that inspires me to write songs about a certain topic. In this case, the topic is the past, present, and future of technology. In some ways, I think of Tech Songs as an open-ended album about tech.

Today I am officially announcing the release of “Baked At Atari,” a lighthearted, ficticious song (but inspired by true events) about engineers at Atari in the mid-1970s. Atari fans amongst you will likely pick out several familiar names and references in the lyrics.

You can listen to the song on my SoundCloud page, or click on the embedded song below.

When you’re done listening, I’d love to hear some suggestions for new tech history song topics — just leave a comment, and I’ll see what I can cook up.

I plan to post future VC&G-related Tech Songs on this site, but you can also follow Benj’s Tech Songs on Twitter: @techsongs