The Orbit

The Orbit

BYTE Magazine Covers and a Gentler Way to Imagine the Future

What Robert Tinney’s paintings reveal about early computer culture and what we lost when tech stopped being illustrated.

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Sarah Yilma's avatar
The Orbit and Sarah Yilma
Jan 14, 2026
∙ Paid

Before the internet taught us to look for the future inside a black mirror, it arrived in softer formats.

It arrived as a brushstroke.

It arrived as a metaphor.

It also arrived as a BYTE magazine cover that looked like it had been made by someone who believed technology was strange, but not evil.

Someone who believed the future would be complex, but maybe s…

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