I
remember the first time I saw a computer.
My Uncle had been doing an internship for IBM on the east coast in
the early eighties and had informed my Dad that he was sending one our way, but
I don’t know that anyone in my home had enough experience with them to even get
excited. Anyways, the box arrived and it
weighed nearly one hundred and fifty pounds.
When it was out of the box there stood, in my eyes, a giant
putty-colored enigma with a 3.5 in x 4 in screen mounted on the front. The computer was probably seven or eight
inches high, a bit less than two feet wide, and about two and a half feet
deep. When turned on, it sounded like a
jet engine had landed in our family kitchen.
My
brother and I argued for our turns each evening on this technological
wonder. My brother would play Asteroid
and Galaga on this tiny, chocolate brown screen, but I had a different
obsession. The bulky, blocked-off
numerals and letters on this screen glowed in orange, and my little five year
old mind was completely smitten. When I
would type a word into the built-in keyboard with toggles that would stick more
often than not, there would always be that tiny orange cursor blinking at the
end of my thought, almost as though it couldn’t wait to hear what else I had to
tell it; to realize the secrets that I kept only for this monolithic best
friend and me. I would share every
single night my experiences of the whole day, hunting and pecking on this
“anything but user-friendly” keyboard. I
was convinced I was just like Ramona Quimby, jotting down my hopes and dreams
and how much I hated my older sister and the itchy clothes that I always had to
wear to church. At the end of each
session I would simply walk away from the desk.
I didn’t save anything; I didn’t clear the screen. I didn’t even know what powering down was in
1984. So obviously my parents and anyone
else who was around could, and most likely did, see everything I wrote each
night. The idea of privacy never even
occurred to my childlike sensibilities. That is where it all began for me: My love of writing. My love of writing damn near anything, provided it was in
secret.
I
know that my assignment is to compare my experiences with technology then
versus now, but I find that so completely impossible and even sort of
ridiculous. It’s like comparing apples
to space shuttles. No, I did not have a
Leap Pad when I was little. Leap Pads
came out after my fourteen year old son was born, for heaven’s sake. I wrote on paper; lots and lots of
paper! But, yeah-of course I appreciate
technology now. I can define and
research subjects in seconds flat. I can
compose anything from anywhere, and there are even tiny minds wandering about
INSIDE this technology just waiting to tell me if I’m doing it wrong. I definitely can appreciate all that the
aught years has brought in the way of technology, but I must admit: I miss the feeling of having to drive
somewhere and look something up, the patience that I developed by not having
instant gratification. I look forward to
what science has to offer, but I don’t know that I would have many of the best
pieces of me without that glimpse of the future that my Uncle shipped to
our doorstep thirty years ago.
Trying to describe the comparison of technology between then and now is never easy, because it's always evolving. I mean even a laptop that you JUST bought at the store will need an update by the time you get home and take it out of the box. Though I do know what you mean and can relate to how valuable pen and paper were then. It was simplistic to know that writing, was true writing. No red or green sqiggly lines to worry about to get back to later. You just wrote to get your thoughts out of your head and your feelings out of your heart. Plus, the value of the pen for me was to always have one with me to have a girl write her number on my palm, because there were no cell phones at the time. I enjoyed what I read Misti. I look forward to reading more.
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