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Crypto imagines themselves as this, but in reality it’s got all the creative spirit and intellectual rigor of multi-level marketing. It’s the most depressing computer scene ever.

There isn’t anything with the same mystique as the demoscene because everything is so accessible. You can consume endless pages about any topic at will. It’s not like 1992 when getting copies of demos might require legwork around town with floppies in hand.

That said, VR is probably the closest thing. You need hardware and it’s immersive, which means it’s not something you can consume while switching between browser tabs. There are lots of creative people doing interesting things in the space, even at big companies.

> Is there anything today that feels like a underground scene that's "happening", that is acting as a technological vanguard, that is full of mystique, but that hasn't gone mainstream yet? The demo scene felt like absolute magic to me as a kid in 80s.

I think it is very hard to get the same feeling today with the internet.

The difference is that pre-internet, obtaining knowledge was a quest and often required a mentor or even a network, because a lot of knowledge was passed on by word of mouth, getting to talk with the people you admired from the demos you had watched, was a (long) journey (from being an observer to a participant), physical meetups were necessary for collaboration, etc.

I vividly recall my own journey, the people I met who taught me things, introduced me to other people, and of course the myths, like the first time I saw a demo with splines, and someone knew somebody who was at the university who could obtain a paper about splines…

I used to be heavily involved in the demoscene during late 80's/early 90's. (And still occasionally visit demoparties.) I think the best thing in making demos was the feeling of achievement when you managed to get a new effect working. Of course it was a bonus if this was something never seen before, or broke some record, or even placed well in a democompo, but the feeling of "I can do this" was the main driving force behind it all for me.

Recently I've got similar feeling of achievement in DIY electronics. Back in the day making PCBs was difficult and information on how to design them was hard to find. My best attempt was an audio digitizer based on instructions from a magazine, and I never got it working because my hand-drawn PCB was so bad.

These days one can design PCBs with open-source tools and get them manufactured professionally for very cheap. There is a wealth of various microcontroller modules and add-on boards that can be used as building blocks in projects. Internet is full of design resources, and all possible components one can imagine can be ordered online.

Although I haven't participated in any IRL meetings, I think there's also something similar to demoscene in these communities, both online and IRL. It's not as competitive as demoscene used to be though (but I think that's only a good thing).

Most of these DIY electronics projects would never be possible in commercial setting because there's no viable economy behind them. However, as it's relatively cheap these days to implement even fairly complex electronics projects, we are seeing stuff that's somewhere in this intersection of non-commercial / creative / cutting edge technology - just like the demoscene used to be.

> VR? Crypto? Machine Learning? Generative art?

Yep. Pretty much.

VR done well is straight-up magical. But, being less convenient than seated distant-screen experience is keeping it fringe.

I've been glancing back at this image https://i.imgur.com/BT8rMuy.png of an on for a couple weeks now. Generated from the text "Little Red Riding Hood meet the wolf in the style of Beksiński"

I also find it really fun that the game emulation scene is moving into the consumer FPGA space with open-source-driven products like "MiSTer FPGA".

Mame and MiSTer team that document old hardware for re-implementation?

like https://www.patreon.com/laxer3a or https://arcade.vastheman.com/decap/

PICO-8 platform?

Absolutely this. What people are doing on the Pico-8 is nothing short of magical, the system is very limited yet people produce all kinds of crazy demos for it.

Shadertoy?

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