Slashdot Mirror
Slashdot Asks: Did You Have a Shared Family Computer Growing Up? (theverge.com)
theodp writes: "Long before phone addiction panic gripped the masses and before screen time became a facet of our wellness and digital detoxes," begins Katie Reid's article, How the Shared Family Computer Protected Us from Our Worst Selves, "there was one good and wise piece of technology that served our families. Maybe it was in the family room or in the kitchen. It could have been a Mac or PC. Chances are it had a totally mesmerizing screensaver. It was the shared family desktop." She continues: "I can still see the Dell I grew up using as clear as day, like I just connected to NetZero yesterday. It sat in my eldest sister's room, which was just off the kitchen. Depending on when you peeked into the room, you might have found my dad playing Solitaire, my sister downloading songs from Napster, or me playing Wheel of Fortune or writing my name in Microsoft Paint. The rules for using the family desktop were pretty simple: homework trumped games; Dad trumped all. Like the other shared equipment in our house, its usefulness was focused and direct: it was a tool that the whole family used, and it was our portal to the wild, weird, wonderful internet. As such, we adored it." Did you have a shared family computer growing up? Can you relate to any of the experiences Katie mentioned in her article? Please share your thoughts in a comment below.
I had a shared family computer, way back in the 90s (not old enough to have cool hacking stories about 80s era tech). But what was protected? Everything that is nasty about the internet was true then, just in lesser form. It's just the case that everyone is online now, rather than a smaller subset of people who were more aware of technology. The irony is that the more anonymous the internet was, the nicer and safer it was. My thought is 90% of what is nasty online is because everything is less anonymous. Back in the 90s, when you were cooldude69 and talking to a guy pretending to be coolchick98, what harm could come of it? It's only when it becomes real life and you start giving real addresses that problems start creeping in. Doxxing and harassment isn't relevant when you could disappear and start again. Like on slashdot, my UID is 9 billion, but I could have been UID 42, get in trouble, delete the account, and disappear. Of course, a fully anonymous net will let a lot of fringe views, conspiracies, and nasty stuff fester, but that stuff will always be present.
Feels old while thinking about the clone-286 he used running DOS and then desqview/286 after having upgraded his apple-II.. :)
Then feels a bit sorry for the kids these days who missed out on such a golden age
Good grief what an insanely stupid question. PC or Mac? Try going further back a little like Atari/Commodores. Phones (with neighbors) 1 TV in the house (shocking, I know!!!) hell, even just 1 radio!!! (You know, the thing you have to listen to?) There's a whole host of other things that were shared in the past that aren't as often now (bathrooms, bedrooms, even beds)
The cesspool just got a check and balance.
Not trying to pull an Al Gore here, but if it were not for my 7th grade computer literacy teacher, and our brief introduction to BASIC on a trs-80, I am not sure what my life would be like today. I came from a food insecure household, and rarely owned more than 3 pairs of pants and 3 shirts at a time. A family computer was just out of the question. Even back then, in the mid 80s, I was keenly interested in video games, and decided I wanted to learn how to program them, so I took that first class.
I was instantly hooked. I owe a lifelong debt to my teacher, who let me stay after school messing around writing programs while I waited on the bus (city, not school, we were using a fake residence to keep me out of the school in the bad part of town.) I decided right then and there that I needed to have one. So I scrimped and saved every penny I could get my hands on, hid them from my mom, and after 2 years I had 150 dollars, which I used to buy a used commodore 64 from a college kid without my mom's knowledge. Except for the few times it got pawned by my mom, I was on it constantly, taught myself the hardware and ml, and eventually started a career as a programmer.
I know it's not sharing a family computer, but when I look back on it, that Jr. high class was the most important thing I ever did in my life, and I still think of that c64, which I still own, as probably my fondest possession.
Anyway, obligatory shout out to Code.org , which hopefully is reaching kids like me every day.