A friend of mine posted a link to an article on Facebook this morning and I got very nostalgic seeing it because it brought back so many memories. It wasn't a photo of his kids or a photo from our high school days. Nope, it was The First IBM PC was Released 35 Years Ago Today. It DID change computers forever.I was thinking that most of the humans on earth under age 40 or thereabouts have NO IDEA of the importance of this historical fact.
How could they? They have grown up in a world where they take computers for granted. From the scanning of groceries at the store to looking up a phone number on Google to getting around using a GPS, they take computers for granted. They live in a world that I never imagined when I was 21 years old - which is, ironically, when the first PC was released, 1983.
So just for fun I decided to do a personal timeline of my computer experience.
1976 - I start high school at Farragut High in Knoxville, where there are only 3 or 4 computers in the entire school, and only a few kids who take computer science classes are allowed to touch them. Now there are computers in every school, even in elementary schools, and there are children who take laptops to school and never open a textbook.
1981 - I start classes at the University of Georgia in Athens.My roommate is a business major but she takes a lot of computer science classes. She doesn't own a computer. In order to study Cobal and Fortran she has to go to the computer lab on campus and use their computers. The lab is ALWAYS crowded, so she goes in the middle of the night. I am in awe of the fact that she can even turn on a computer, something I've never done.
My knowledge of computers is from old movies like the classic Katharine Hepburn Spencer Tracy movie Desk Set, in which a computer eliminates the need for human research librarians at a television network. Very prescient, that film, and fun to watch even today.
1985 - I get my first real job, a paralegal at a law firm in Knoxville. Nobody has a computer. A few of the secretaries have huge IBM typewriters with some memory, but that's it. After I've been there a couple of years the partners decide to get all the secretaries computers. They have to go take classes. The 75 year old secretary who has been there for decades protests mightily and they take her computer away after a week because she complains so much and she never really learns how to use it. They make one of the associates go out to a warehouse somewhere and find the exact old IBM typewriter she had used for years and bring it back to her. Fortunately, she primarily works for an attorney who rarely composes a letter more than a few sentences long, and whose cases do not usually involve the typing of long briefs.
I envy the secretaries. I want my own computer.
Shortly after I start, the only other paralegal in the firm pulls me aside and says softly "Don't EVER tell them you can type! Then they will make you type your own work and you'll never get a secretary!" She is dead serious.
1988 - I get another job at another law firm in Knoxville, where I can make my own hours while in graduate school. They don't use computers but some of the secretaries have huge unwieldy computer-like things called CRTs, which are sort of similar to computers. During my 5 years there, the secretaries eventually get computers. I don't, even after I finish graduate school and start working there full-time. Sometime during this period I enroll in and take a class in Wordperfect over at The University of Tennessee. I proudly show my certificate of completion to my boss. He still won't give me a computer.
1990 - I finish my master's thesis, and because I don't have a computer at home or even at work, I have to give it to a professional typist to type for me.
1993 - I get my first paralegal job here in Atlanta, and for the first time in my life I get to use a computer at work. Even with my certificate in Wordperfect I am scared and thrilled to learn how to really use a computer, send an email, etc. They assign a secretary to teach me how to use my computer.
1995? - Around this time the old green letter monitors are replaced by color monitors. Woo hoo! I feel very excited. We don't have internet access but the color monitors are easier on my eyes.
1994? - Around this time my brother buys a used 486 computer and monitor for me, and sets it up. Now I can write from home. I write my first long work, a screenplay. I also spend a lot of time playing Tetris and Frogger. All my poetry, stories, and screenplays are kept on floppy disks. I install Wordperfect on the computer. There is no internet access at my apartment but I don't care.
1997 - After my father dies in mid 1996, my brother and I decide Mother should have a computer at home. She is only 62 and has never worked during her 39 year marriage. We know a Gateway computer will give her a new intellectual challenge, help her to cope. We ask her if she wants a computer. "No!" is the vehement reply. We get it anyway. My brother sets it up and shows her how to use it. She is very tentative with it at first but he calms her down by saying "Mom, relax. You can't break it!"
1998 - My mother and I decide to write a cookbook together, both to preserve recipes and tell stories. I write it using my home computer, using WordPerfect. Elva's Blue Scallop cookbook is a hit with friends and family and my aunt, who manages a nut store in Myrtle Beach, buys copies to sell to her customers, since we feature some of her recipes. (You can sometimes still find copies floating around, like on Amazon.)
1999 - I buy a condo and get a new computer, and for the first time I have internet at home. Wow!
It's around this time that I get another paralegal job, at a much bigger firm where there is internet access. I can look up court information and rules and do legal research on the internet. That's all we're allowed to do but that's okay. The internet still scares me. If I am looking for something I use a search engine called Dogpile.
My computer at home is not high speed. When I want to get on the internet, I unplug my landline phone and plug the phone line into the computer, then wait a few minutes. Downloading an email with pictures takes a while, maybe as long as 10 minutes. I go wash dishes while waiting for emails to finish downloading. Nobody can call me during this time because the phone line is tied up.
Yes, cell phones exist in the 90's but mine stays in my car, plugged into the cigarette lighter.
2000 - As the world enters the 21st century, everyone is terrified that when 1999 becomes 2000, all over the world the computers will crash, unable to handle the date change. Big companies devote months to studying it - are you Y2K prepared? becomes a catchphrase. My brother and I are at Mother's that night, celebrating not just New Year's Eve, but her birthday. She is worried. About 5 p.m. my brother gets an email from a friend in Australia who says relax, no big deal. We relax.
2001 - I get a job in the law department of a large corporation where everyone uses Word. I have to learn Word. I hate it at first. Then I get used to it. (Now I cannot imagine ever going back to WordPerfect.)
2001 - My mother freaks out because of 911 and tells me I need to get "one of those cell phones you can carry in your purse." I understand her fear. The day of 911 I go home early from work, driving back roads after getting $300 from my bank account in case the bank computers fail. I am glad Mom has taught me to keep a lot of canned goods on hand. Nobody knows if there will be food shortages. Nobody knows what will happen. The world is suddenly a profoundly different, scary place. Mom had lived through the Cuban Missile Crisis. She is scared but prepared.
2003 - I go to Russia in January, to sing Handel's Messiah with a choir in Khabarovsk, with the city symphony. It's exciting and a bit scary, so soon after 911. I keep in touch with my mother primarily by sending home emails using the hotel's computer. It costs something like $10 for 30 minutes of use. I am delighted however, because placing a phone call to the US is very hard.
2004 - I take a week long class to learn to use Excel. I don't like it but I can use it.
2004 - I adopt my daughter and we get home in December. All my friends and family members want daily updates. I start this blog and send the link and password to everyone so I don't have to keep writing long emails.
2005 - I move to the house where I currently live, and for the first time I have high speed internet. I am thrilled beyond belief. I also get a digital camera and learn how to take pictures and put them in the computer and edit them using Picasa. It's really helpful because I have to take lots of photos for my daughter's adoption post placement reports.
2006 - I buy a used computer and put it in the guest bedroom so my daughter can use it. She learns the computer faster than she learns English.
2007 - I go to Kazakhstan to adopt my son and borrow a friend's laptop, so I can work on a book, and stay connected with home via the internet. I keep a blog that everyone can check every day, and follow along on my journey.
2009 - My son teaches me how to use Powerpoint because he has to use it for school projects.
2009 - I publish my first book, Adopting Alesia: My Crusade for My Russian Daughter, a book written entirely on my home computer.
2014 - I get my first Apple smartphone, a 4S. Now I have a computer I can carry around in my pocket. Like everyone else, my camera goes into a drawer, and my calculator, and several flashlights. The world has changed drastically, yet again.
2015 - I buy my son a laptop to use for his college work.
I have to wonder what my grandchildren will think one day. Will they stumble across this blog and laugh at silly old Memaw, born into a world where the most high tech thing in the house was something called a "hi fi" and she listened to records and had to dial a rotary phone? A world where people were sometimes in the car or a store or restaurant and they could not be reached by phone?! WTH?!
When my grandparents were born their families didn't have have electric lights or automobiles. That was two generations ago. When my mother was born her family didn't have a television and you had to go to the theater to see a movie. When I was born we had a TV but it only got two channels, and bonody touched the camera but Dad.
Now my mother is 82 and still uses her computer every day and even has her own blog.
Now I can carry a tiny computer in my pocket. I still have a desktop PC, unlike a lot of folks, and I use it to make a living as a writer.
My how the world has changed..
