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…..

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.

This was the machine on which I learned spreadsheets (Visicalc?), database programming (I *loved* dBase) , and BBSs (Galacticomm). What fun!

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.

http://grandeped.blogspot.com/2007/07/my-history-with-computers-part-1.html