I'm starting to make some technological changes in my life, upgrades and all. And this has started me thinking about how much computers have taken over the world. This led to a funny email thread with another blogger about how it makes us feel old to realize that people 10 years younger than us - people graduating from college - have never known life without computers!
Along the same lines, Jon Stewart had a whole bit about how we've become so accustomed to computers in our lives that Y2K had us all freaked out thinking about life returning to the way it was.... in 1982!!!!!!
I remember the first time I saw a computer. I was in 4th grade, way back in 1984. I was a math geek when I was a kid, and I was in a special advanced class with 2 other kids that was taught by the curriculum coordinator, Miss Barone, who later became Mrs. Greer. (Mock me if you must - but trust me I couldn't do calculus now if you paid me a million dollars!)
Mrs. Greer was very excited one day to take the 3 of us on a field trip - yes, a math class field trip! The high school had just gotten its very first computer, and she took the 3 of us up there to see it. There we were in a special classroom that, as I recall, just had that computer in it. It was an Apple (a IIc? is that possible?), with the green monochrome screen. Mrs. Greer hit some keys and some DOS language appeared (very LOST, I know), and all I really remember was it started doing lots of wavy lines on the screen kinda like that Windows screensaver of today. That was it, the amazing technology of the day.
Within a few years, the elementary school had a computer lab filled with Apples that now had color screens. The most popular use of those computers was to play this game called LOGO (I think), where there was a little triangular "turtle" on the screen, and you had to type in commands to get it to move, to draw lines, to change the background color of the screen, etc. You had to type in the command in some code at the C>: prompt, and if it was a proper command it would execute it. If the code was wrong, it would say "I don't know how to" followed by whatever you'd entered.
Well, you can guess what a bunch of adolescents did with this. Nothing brought on fits of hysterical laughter as reliably as:
C>: FUCK
LOGO: I DON'T KNOW HOW TO FUCK.
Oh, hours and hours of fun!
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10 comments:
YES it was LOGO WRITER!!!
Haha I played that too...
But the real gem of my youth was OREGON TRAIL.
AM: My brother played OREGON TRAIL, but I was more a fan of the CARMEN SANDIEGO series. Where in the world is she???
Plus I loved this typing program we had at school called "Paws" - the whole point was to type fast and accurately enough to make it through a sentence on the screen before "Paws the cat" ate it up. What better way to improve your wpm?
I recall the green screen. In fact, when I took my first computer science class it was on a green screen. Damn I am old!
Good lord. The Green Screen. That was before the black screen too! Stupid command prompts. I took Computers in College and basically failed because how the hell do you learn computers in a LECTURE HALL?
We didn't have computers until middle school and those were for typing instruction, no games. My parents did somehow get a Texas Instrument computer that has some cartridge style games, but they really didn't do anything. I set it up and tried playing with it, but it was useless.
When I got to high school, we had some computers for processing, but that was it as well. However, when I was a senior, I tutored a kindergarten student on spelling, reading and some other subjects. We learned Oregon Trail together!
I didn't actively start using email until 1999. Seems so recent! I love the internet now!
Since my Dad was into computers and later taught them in high school, we always had something new at our house.
I remember our very first was from Timex-Sinclair. It was no bigger than a hardcover book and had just a 1-line display.
Our only game system was the Odyssey2. In fact, I think Dad still has that!
OMG I totally did Carmen Sandiego and Paws too....hahahahhaa
I'm jealous you got to see Jon Stewart. I don't even have cable, so I have to get my Stewart and Colbert kicks on the comedy central web site.
I played LOGO, Paws, AND Oregon Trail in Mrs. Stow's computer lab. BUT, when I was in about third or fourth grade I guess, we got a Texas Instruments computer. Everyone else had an Atari, but I wasn't allowed to have a machine whose only function was playing games. We had Space Invaders and Hunt the Wumpus and several other cartridge games. My grandfather subscribed to computer programming magazines for me and I would spend hours typing in programs. Then for Xmas 1986 I got a Commodore 64...thus began the publication of the neighborhood newspaper The Sleepy Lake Times....
Do you remember how at UR first semester you had to sign up to have email and almost no one did? And how you could do that "talk" feature with folks who were in the same network and online at the same time? And that you had to go to a computer lab to do all of that? Imagine the changes that happened just in the time we were in college? Do you remember that I was the Internet research guru at Jepson?? Do you remember the problems with citing to webpages? I could go on and on and on and on....
we had a commodore 64 portable when I was in elementary school. The screen was about as big as this box. The computer was about the size and weight of a standard tower now. Then we got an IMB-compatible "portable" which is what I typed high school papers on. Orange screen on that one! We used apple 2's in elementary school and I learned A Basic in junior high. Oh, what good that has done me.
I remember when a friend gave me his email address after high school graduation and I said "what's that?".
AS
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