Yep, I'm old.

My son turns four in December. My wife thought it'd be fun to have a robot theme for his party because Thomas is into robots these days. I hatched up a plan to turn one room in the house into a spaceship. This wasn't going to be anything near Disneyland-level entertainment; I just thought it would be cool if the entrance into the room looked like part of a spaceport, using some black sheets, a black light, fluorescent paint, sound effects (a low-frequency humming and beep-boop computer sounds), and maybe a logbook that the kids signed before they boarded the ship.

I spent about an hour searching for the perfect sound effects on Amazon -- you know, the occasional burst of random square-wave notes -- and kept getting frustrated when the sounds that claimed to be "computer sound effects" were mostly keyboard clacking and mouse clicks, with a few caricatures of Windows alert messages.

Then it hit me: These are proper computer sound effects; moreover, nobody born after 1980 could possibly understand the kitschy theme I was going for. When I see an old movie showing a refrigerator-sized appliance with spinning tape discs, I have fond memories of the 1970s characterization of computers. But to my kids, there isn't any characterization of computers, whether in cinema or in real life. There are just computers; they're an ordinary part of ordinary life, and there's no need to glamorize or fictionalize them.

I'm now starting to appreciate the allure of dinosaurs and pirates. Giant monsters and guys with swords will always be popular, and they're not subject to Moore's Law.