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.
Sorry, I come from the time of the shared family phone. Hardwired to the wall, without even a connector. Sometimes shared with neibors as well... 8-)
When I got a computer, no one else saw any reason to use it. Years later, yes, but not then.
We didn't have a shared family computer, but we had a rock and some sticks. After hauling water 50 miles from the nearest creek, eating our small meal of dandelion roots, and sweeping the dirt floor to clean up, we would then sit cross-legged in a circle and roll our family rock back and forth with the sticks for a few hours on end. Such fond memories. Those were the good ol' days.
I'm from before that time of shared family computers.
I bought and hacked and built my own computer equipment. My electronics hobby was considered odd and too expensive. So I worked, saved, scrimped and scrounged. The first 'real' computer I bought was one of the very early Exidy Sorcerer computers (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exidy_Sorcerer). I had used a KIM-1 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KIM-1) and a Apple I (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_I) at school. I went to college during high school where I used punch card computers and PDP-11. In some ways when I bought my first one, the Sorcerer, it was a step down, except I got the whole thing to myself and I could open it up and hack it, which I did, adding memory, more I/O, tape data storage (my own version, not the bought one). It was great fun.
Later after I left the house my parents started buying family computers and then still later computers for each of my seven siblings as they went off to college. Prices came down and the computers became more mainstreamed.
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.
In junior high, we had Teletypes and Decwriters with acoustic coupler modems (300 Baud) for access to the DEC TSS-8 system shared by my whole school system. The TSS-8 had sixteen dial-in ports. We had to reserve time on a terminal a week in advance. Even then, all of the phone lines to the system's computer might be busy and we might never connect during our sign-up time. We had to store our assembler, Fortran, and Basic programs on paper tape. The 128kB of disk space was reserved for teachers.
Home computers? I was almost out of college by then.
Remembered the shared family TV? I barely can.
I can remember that I was the remote control.
Good grief no..
I bought my first computer when I had just barely graduated from college. (TRS-80 model I) No one else in my family even knew how to turn it on or what to do with it. My nephew came over and wrote a "game" - i.e. a random number generator that determined whether you survived a WWII bombing mission. Now he is a System Admin for a hospital and still can't program his way out of a paper bag - er - wet paper bag with a sharp knife.
My son had his own computer since we decided to use my bonus money to buy a off brand 486 box, he inherited my 286. Once he got enough money he bought all the components and has built out several fire breathing monsters that leave my boxes, seven of them, in the dust. (He is a artist/trouble shooter for a game company).
I still have the TRS-80 model I with its monitor, expansion box and a "flippy" drive out in the garage.
I ran a large BBS in upstate New York with tons of door games, file areas, message boards, and FIDOnet. It all started with our Tandy 1000 PC that had two floppy drives and no hard drive. In 1988 I managed to trade some stuff I had for an ENORMOUS hard drive - 40 MEGAbytes, that miraculously worked in the Tandy. IIRC it was a Miniscribe 8450. The actuator made the coolest sounds.
g=c800:5 and a few keystrokes later, I had space for my first BBS. I ran a piece of software called Phoenix RCS at first, but transitioned to WWIV later as the BBS grew. I ended up on Wildcat, because all the BBSes in that time ended up on Wildcat. I had 4 incoming lines at the height of it all in 1989, but pared it back to two as the 90s rolled around and BBSes started falling off in popularity. I finally pulled the plug in 1994 when I was only getting a few calls per day and there was clearly no more interest in BBSing in the area.
I often think about setting up a terminal BBS again, but it's just not the same without... that sounds.... screeeeeeeeeeeee .. beeeeeee .ksshhhhhhhhhh... CONNECT 2400
Those were an incredibly fun and enriching 6 years though, and I met some of the coolest people. I will always have fond memories of growing up in the BBS age. You young whipper snappers are really missing out on the earliest dawn of the age of communication and data. I would encourage you to see the BBS documentary. It's a great watch.
I hope this has been a fun, reminiscent story for a lot of you slashdotters. Take care.
NO CARRIER
"The picture looks great, now just hold it there and don't move for an hour!"
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.