The Forge of the Demoscene

theRaPist-213

God created the world, and out of this process came plants, fish, animals, birds, and finally, men. Who created the demoscene? It was brave men, men resembling God, who built the first computers. These brave men made it possible that the demoscene could ever exist. Without computers, we would understand a different thing by the word demoscene. Maybe it would mean demonstration scene in the sense of political demonstrations! Or even worse, demotape scene. Or, worst of all: game demo scene! Ah, okay, sorry... games would not have been possible without these Godlike creatures, either, at least not computer games. In any case... It was men like Alain Turing, Konrad Zuse, actually even Blaise Pascal who made the demoscene possible, without whom the demoscene would have never seen the light, would never have thrived as today. Without them, many people would be hopelessly depressed because they would not have any area where they would be respected at and even called "elite" - they would just have a rotten real life, far from the optimum of the fruit life can give us.

Who were these men? They were mathematicians and physicists, people who never coded a demo and were still more important for the demoscene than any Future Crew or Ultraforce member. They shared the same spirit, however, the same idealistic spirit, the spirit to create something new, innovative, some fruit of geniousity... Well, were they really idealistic? Never wanted to make money or get some fame? We do not know, but we do not care either, because all of these men are history, and we know them only from history books and magazines. As a consequence, we cannot judge them, neither objectively - if that is possible at all - nor subjectively. A contradiction? Did we not just praise them and thus judge them, judge them well for their great deeds? In any case... Good were the men that made computers possible and thus made the demoscene possible.

But were there only men? No, there was a notable exception. Her name was Ada Lovelace, and she was the first programmer. Yes, coders, your great ancestor was female! Well, a pretty good argument for the Women's Rights pressure groups to prove that men and women are equal, I would say. Or, they were equal. How many female coders do you know today? In any case... Ada Lovelace, Blaise Pascal's girlfriend, was the first programmer, and she programmed the machines her boyfriend developed. Without her, maybe... well, without her, the first programmer would have been a man, probably. And the demoscene would have one goddess less.

So these were the creators of computers, the great men and women who laid the fundaments of the demoscene, but was that all? No, that was not all, because even if there are already computers, there are still no c64, no Amiga, no Atari ST, no PC! In other words, the creators of these systems are also gods, very important for the foundation of the demoscene. And not only them! The managing directors, the businessmen were equally important. They spread the computers among the people, at very low prices... Really low? In any case... Without them, these computers would perhaps have been too expensive for the loners and weirdos that were to become demosceners later and so the demoscene would not have existed, at least not the demoscene we know.

After we had these particular computer sytems, what else was necessary to forge the demoscene? Not very much! All that was now missing was the first demosceners, people from Red Sector and how these oldie groups were called...

Really?

And what about this great coder's mother who bought him his first c64?

And what about that great graphician's girlfriend who left him, which made him so bored that he started to pixel?

And what about this lamer next door who gave this great coder some old issues of Scientific American with articles about vector-math, which he found in some trashcan by accident?

And what about that computer game company whose game contained such a bad soundtrack that that great musician started to compose SIDs himself?

And what about the editors of this lame magazine in which the great sysop found an ad about a cool acoustic device he wanted to play with by any means?

And what about this teacher at the school the great editor attended whose lessons were so boring that he started to scribble his first articles in the meantime?

And what about God?

theRaPist-213