A history with computers

My first memory of computer technology dates back to 1989. I was in kindergarten. (Or maybe it was the first grade?) Jeffrey’s Grove Elementary in Raleigh, NC had a new, state of the art program designed to help teach students how to spell. It was a process that involved giving all of the students in the class lessons corresponding to the brown, first level spelling packet. We would practice in class, then spend time in our computer lab using a program that corresponded to the packet. Once we passed tests on the computer, we could move on to the next level…yellow. This continued on through green, red, and then purple. We always had assistants to help us with the program, but I could never really figure it out. I was a great speller, just not technologically gifted. Once I learned how to use the funny machine in front of me, however, things fell right into place.
Soon after, I began to acknowledge our computer at home. It was a huge, bulky thing. It was possibly a Mac Classic. The screen sat way up high on top of the machine, and I remember sitting in the chair and cocking my head way back to see the neon writing on the greenish-black face. The box of floppy disks, which were actually big floppy, plastic things, was not to be touched because I could “mess up very important information,” so my parents said. I mostly watched my older brother and sister play games with this huge joy stick until I got enough courage to really engage with the thing. Most of my early memories of computers are more visual. I remember looking at the screen and watching others play the games, but not really what it was like to interact with it. Not until, that is, I discovered Solitaire.
“C-D space w-i-n-enter. C-D space w-i-n-enter C-d-space w-i-n-d-o-w-s.” I remember not knowing why, but when the black screen came up after turning on our newer computer, this was the exact typing that took me to that lovely card game I couldn’t get enough of, Solitaire. This jump started my interest with computers as a source of entertainment.
Programs like Number Crunchers and Oregon Trail were used in middle school when we went to the lab. About once every month or two classes would get to go to the computer lab on a Friday or something to practice math. If we finished early, we could play Oregon Trail.
In the late nineties, our Compaq became the source of many fights between my brother and me. We always fought over instant messenger. There were times when I couldn’t get enough of it. I would chat back in forth with a few other friends who had the program. Mostly, in the beginning we would go into chat rooms and try to have some silly and perverted conversation with god knows whoever else was in those chat rooms. I remember reading things like “16 yr old male here, looking for female.” For all I knew, it was probably some other curious twelve-year old. Thinking back on it now, there is no telling who we were talking to. As time went on, however, it was a source for ‘real communication.’
AOL instant messenger probably caused more fights in middle school than I could ever know. Cutting and pasting (and then printing) became a grand new mechanism for showcasing someone’s feelings, trash-talking, crushes, and any other gossip to all who saw it. The loss of inhibition due to the medium was incredible. I would never have said some of the things that I typed back then.
Throughout this time period, typed assignments became a norm at school. All major papers should be typed, unless you had no access to a computer, but those exceptions were made less and less. I had to type a 50-page novel for my eighth grade language arts class. All in just a couple of days too. That was probably my first experience with a late-night, procrastination driven computer experience.
It was not until the ninth grade, 1998, that I became a heavy user of e-mail. My boyfriend went to Lebanon each summer and that was our only source of communication. Making a trip to use a computer was so rare for him that I only heard from him three times over the course of two months.
Over the next few years, my computer usage rose exponentially. School work required typing. In college, I had to email teachers. I downloaded music. I chatted. I played games. And now, all of those things are even more convenient, and because of that, required. Now, a computer is a must as a student, or mostly as anything else for that matter. It’s how I get news, talk to friends and family, entertain myself, and get work done. Who knew, in 1989, that I would spend approximately 8 hours a week, sometimes much more, in front of one of these silly machines?


What the computers at school looked like in the first grade:
http://www.cs.bham.ac.uk/about/history/images/1980s.jpg"

My first computer at home:
"