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
The following dates and ages are rough:
1989: At seven years old my father got the Apple IIC. It was put in the den, later to be renamed "the computer room." At seven I could play ‘Pac-man’ and ‘Jordan vs. Bird.’ My feeble brain didn’t understand that you had to eat the big dots to make the ghosts scared and I had no idea who Jordan or Bird were. Still, computers proved to be an interesting pass-time.
1992: Parents give into my whining and buy a NES. A side history could be given of my PGH (personal gaming history) but lets stick to technology in general, with an emphasis on personal computers.
1993: My father shows me how to sign "online." This involves putting in a code and waiting while the computer makes funny noises. When all is done I can talk to people or play games through an online network called ‘Prodigy.’
1994/95: Prodigy gives way to American Online. Me and other pre-teen friends have fun chatting online pretending to be people we are not. Hey, it’s not real people we are talking to. They are just screen-names.
1995: I develop the Avatar Rudyoncal. It has stuck with me through highschool and through part of college. It was an AOL account that eventually ceased to be used and I decided to go to a more respectiable dcohn1 for my email.
1999: The video game Golden Eye, a James Bond game is released into my world. Me and my guy friends ignore women completely and are perfectly content to play Bond all night while engaging in under age drinking.
2000: While a freshman at U.C. Berkeley I am able to download as many songs as I want. There is
rumor that Napster will be shut down soon. My downloading reaches a hurried pace.
2001: My computer is stolen, thousands of downloaded songs lost. : (
2003: I begin to hate technology and engage in Luddite behavior and rants regularly (I was a rebellious college student)
2004: I graduate college and soon intern at Wired where I stare at a computer all day. Soon I am up to speed on tech news and could talk for hours on what’s going on.
2005: I get an iPod.
2005/6: I start Digidave the blog. My knowledge of the web continues to grow.
—– What’s next? I don’t know. Soon I figure I’ll implant a chip in my brain and take over the world as a supreme being that is part man and part machine. But until then — what’s your PCH (personal computer history)? I bring this up because I am of the rare age that remembers what life was like before the Internet. Kids a few years younger than me don’t know that computers and the Internet were two separate innovations. They two are inexorably combined. What I want is to collect stories from people who were kids, but were old enough to vaguely remember what it was like when the Internet was just dawning.