In Washington D.C., the coolest Smithsonian museum was the American History Museum, where you can find the Fonz’s jacket, the first lady’s gowns, and Dizzy Gillespies tcarumpet. The section of the museum I ran straight for, like a kid in a candy shop, was the science and technology section. I was a bit disappointed that most of it was being remodeled, but I did get to see a bit.

The parts that was open gave me a clue why other sections were being ‘touched up.’ It has to be hard having a museum on personal computers, radios, printers and such. Every six months you get new ancient artifacts. In one section they talked about Ham radios and how people could create their own radio programs and broadcast them. That’s pretty 1994, I thought to myself. Podcasting anyone? … I felt like I was from the future.

But I’m sure they are in the process of updating, I just hope when they are done things haven’t gone forward in leaps and bounds again. That poor curator.

The exhibit, as any good museum exhibit should, has inspired me. I will now give a brief history of my experience with technology (very brief and not exhaustive), starting with my first computer — The Apple IIC 

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