Hall Davidson loaned me a book that he thought I’d like, John Sandford’s The Empress File. I gotta admit that I’m enjoying it, but a big part of the pleasure is that it’s about a high tech hacker using cutting edge technology… Oh yeah, did I happen to mention that the book was written in 1991?
Some of the phrases in the book that have gotten me all misty eyed include:
I had two computers on the boat. One was a top-of-the-line 486 with enough hard-disk space to store the complete denials of Richard M. Nixon.
Heh. I’m pretty sure that I carry at least 5 devices that have that much memory on me at all times.
I also carried a laptop with built-in hard-disk and a telephone modem
Whoa! Both a hard drive and a telephone modem! Heh, do computers even come with telephone modems anymore? I don’t think my last 3 or 4 have.
Can’t find the passage, but the other line that stood out was when he referred to a PC as an “IBM clone.” It’s been a long time since every single PC was considered to be a clone of the all powerful IBM. Also he mentions looking through someone’s computer, and he found “two applications, a word processor and a spreadsheet, but no data.” Aaahhhhh, the good ol’ days. You could store programs, or you could store data, but there wasn’t enough space to store both!
I remember my first computer was a Kaypro 10. A monster of a ‘laptop’ with a teeny tiny little green screen that could only display characters. Wasn’t very powerful, could only run a few programs, but it had a modem and that opened up an entirely new world to me. Ddials, BBS’s, and a seemingly unlimited supply of information.
Anybody else taking a trip down memory lane right now?
Oh - wow… I did just that last week on one of my blogs. I did a two part series of my history with computers! Here’s part one (warning - it is very long and nostalgic, with plenty of links to screen shots and old photos):
http://grandeped.blogspot.com/2007/07/my-history-with-computers-part-1.html
I’ve said repeatedly that my favorite sci-fi stories are the ones written before I was born. It’s cool to see how much they got right and how much they got wrong.
Asimov’s Foundation series, for example, is an epic tale based loosely on the fall of the Roman Empire, but with planets instead of countries. They have interstellar flight, but to plot their coordinates they did the math by hand since the series was started before computers.
Oh yeah….I loved my Kaypro. That chunky blue and silver box with the green screen. At the time, it was the height of portability.
This was the machine on which I learned spreadsheets (Visicalc?), database programming (I *loved* dBase) , and BBSs (Galacticomm). What fun!
I grew up with a computer programmer father and we had an Apple 2E and an Apple 2+ in the early 80s. I loved them!
I took a 486 to college my freshman year and I was the only one with a computer on my hall. I started using email senior year. It’s amazing how quickly it has all changed.
8/17/2007
Commodore 64 all the way!!! All we used it for at home was playing games.
When I was a junior in high school we got our first word processors in typing class. No one wanted to use them because no one knew how. We were supposed to rotate on the 4 or 5 we had, but no one ever wanted a turn so I always stayed on it. I don’t think everyone realized that you could magically erase your errors and print out a perfect paper every time. Eventually, though, the teacher realized I actually knew how to use them and began asking me about it and asked me to show others. I ended up with a lower grade on my report card because I didn’t have all my work completed. Hmmmm…..
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