Writing My Technology Memoir
I’m dead tired tonight, and couldn’t deal with any of the topics on my list of things to blog about. Still, I wanted to do some kind of writing, even if it wasn’t fit for public consumption. So I’ve been writing, in a very rough form, my technology memoir.
New genre? Sure. You see, when techie types get together (or get into a chat room), they often end up comparing notes on what their earliest technology experiences were. What was your first computer? Your first programming language? Who has the oldest and most obsolete knowledge in the room?
I know. GEEKS! But it is an interesting topic to me, so it got me writing. It’s a way out of writer’s block, or a way to keep writing even when you’re brain dead — just write about something you’re interested in, or about a memory or series of memories, and don’t worry about whether anyone will ever read it.
I’m not publishing my technology memoir (at least not in its current form), but for the record, my first computer (my school’s first computer, that is) was a Commodore PET, on which I learned to program in BASIC.
This post has 6 comments
May 4th, 2009
The most awesome thing about the PET is that there was a poke command that could physically break the computer. Like, forever. Today you have to drop your computer to break it. LAME.
May 4th, 2009
What’s very odd is that you’re nine years older than I am, and yet my first computer was ALSO the PET, and my first (and only) programming language was ALSO QBASIC (which I actually used all the way through high school for teaching and learning camp songs with Girl Scouts across the country). Did the district buy a bunch of PETs and figure they were done for the decade?
May 5th, 2009
I thought you guys had Commodore 64′s? I’m sure they still had the PET’s, though.
May 5th, 2009
There were two Commodore 64s, obviously not enough for a class, so we didn’t use them.
May 5th, 2009
I didn’t have a computer experience until well into my 30′s. My kids used computers in school in the very early 90′s. Home computers were not exactly something in every home in those years. Finally, when I became separated, the first purchase was a computer that went in the corner where my ex’s rocker/recliner used to go. That was a pc 486 running Windows 3.1. I was in heaven having my own computer at home!
May 10th, 2009
Happy Mother’s Day
The first computer I saw was at the school library and it had Oregon Trail on it. My first home computer was an Acer and most of my gmes ran in dos.