Tech meme type stuff
Mar. 27th, 2018 09:54 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jackFirst computer memories (there's several of these)
I remember at some point at primary school, we had a computer to investigate. I remember moving the mouse around, and being impressed at how it 'knew' if you picked it up (apparently I hadn't quite realised how it actually worked yet), and being amazed at moving windows around the GUI. I remember being enthralled and needing to be dragged away from experimenting. I can't remember if that was before we got the C64 or not.
Mum and Dad got me a Commodore 64 for one Christmas, which changed everything. I can't remember the initial excitement well, but I remember that afterwards, it absorbed an awful lot of my energy. I did a lot of programming -- for most things I'm ashamed how little initiative I ever had, but for writing new programs, I always had ideas I wanted to try out and did an awful lot of that. Somehow struggling through saving everything on tape! :)
And at some point later we got a PC. I remember mum arranging it, and then telling me, and us literally dancing in the kitchen in excitement. And I think we got the internet soon after, but I remember having email and not having anyone to email. And she got me visual studio, which was in some ways more of a turning point than getting the PC itself. I don't quite remember when I transitioned from visual basic to C.
Everything else
I was just the age that quite a lot of things coincided with my starting university. Prior to that I'd had a mobile phone, and an internet connection, but they hadn't been primary modes of communication. When I arrived at university, email was the main method of communication, and reaching people by mobile phone was common.
I resisted having a computer in my room for a year or so, on the grounds that going to the computer room was easy and I didn't want to make it easy to just hide in my room full time, but I eventually changed my mind.
At home we had terrestrial TV and didn't bother to get more till after I'd left home, not even a VCR, and then I watched tv barely at all when I was busy with university, and then I got the free cable channels along with an internet connection when I first moved into a house after university. So I skipped over quite a lot of steps (I remember grandparents recording one of the season finales of Babylon 5 when it clashed with something we were doing, and watching it a season later and saying KOSH WAS WHAT? :))
I feel like I'm naturally built for streaming media, I appreciate "everyone watching the same thing at the same time" and "just putting the TV on and seeing what's on" occasionally, but my main conception was how inconvenient it was, I like watching exactly what I want.
Specifics
I had a mobile phone as a teenager, but it only became a thing at university.
I didn't listen to music much at all. Cassette tapes where what I remember people listening to music on. I've no idea what an '8 track tape' is specifically.
I don't remember when I got a DVD player, probably about the time I got a TV, i.e. when I left university.
Just by using computers I got good enough at two-fingers-plus-a-couple-of-others typing that I can effectively touch type with them [that half sentence done with my eyes shut with no errors], but I never learned proper ten fingered touch typing despite a couple of half-hearted attempts. I could get a not-embarrassing speed when I tried, but not as fast as mum who did learn, but I've almost never needed to type fast so I've never gained any stamina, I can only really do short bursts of high wpm.
I've *seen* typewriters, but I can't remember if I've ever seen a typewriter which was used as the most convenient method of typing.
Most people started using facebook at university, but it didn't have a wall yet, it was more like an address book than a social site. I started using livejournal towards the end of university because lots of my friends did (my resolution to only blog things I thought people would want to read was futile). I bought a dreamwidth permanent account when it came out, as I wanted to support it's development. And I didn't get into twitter for a while as I wasn't sure what I wanted to tweet (I remember muddling through the 'send a text message' thing) until one eastercon when it was very useful and then I just started tweeting stuff after that.
I remember at some point at primary school, we had a computer to investigate. I remember moving the mouse around, and being impressed at how it 'knew' if you picked it up (apparently I hadn't quite realised how it actually worked yet), and being amazed at moving windows around the GUI. I remember being enthralled and needing to be dragged away from experimenting. I can't remember if that was before we got the C64 or not.
Mum and Dad got me a Commodore 64 for one Christmas, which changed everything. I can't remember the initial excitement well, but I remember that afterwards, it absorbed an awful lot of my energy. I did a lot of programming -- for most things I'm ashamed how little initiative I ever had, but for writing new programs, I always had ideas I wanted to try out and did an awful lot of that. Somehow struggling through saving everything on tape! :)
And at some point later we got a PC. I remember mum arranging it, and then telling me, and us literally dancing in the kitchen in excitement. And I think we got the internet soon after, but I remember having email and not having anyone to email. And she got me visual studio, which was in some ways more of a turning point than getting the PC itself. I don't quite remember when I transitioned from visual basic to C.
Everything else
I was just the age that quite a lot of things coincided with my starting university. Prior to that I'd had a mobile phone, and an internet connection, but they hadn't been primary modes of communication. When I arrived at university, email was the main method of communication, and reaching people by mobile phone was common.
I resisted having a computer in my room for a year or so, on the grounds that going to the computer room was easy and I didn't want to make it easy to just hide in my room full time, but I eventually changed my mind.
At home we had terrestrial TV and didn't bother to get more till after I'd left home, not even a VCR, and then I watched tv barely at all when I was busy with university, and then I got the free cable channels along with an internet connection when I first moved into a house after university. So I skipped over quite a lot of steps (I remember grandparents recording one of the season finales of Babylon 5 when it clashed with something we were doing, and watching it a season later and saying KOSH WAS WHAT? :))
I feel like I'm naturally built for streaming media, I appreciate "everyone watching the same thing at the same time" and "just putting the TV on and seeing what's on" occasionally, but my main conception was how inconvenient it was, I like watching exactly what I want.
Specifics
I had a mobile phone as a teenager, but it only became a thing at university.
I didn't listen to music much at all. Cassette tapes where what I remember people listening to music on. I've no idea what an '8 track tape' is specifically.
I don't remember when I got a DVD player, probably about the time I got a TV, i.e. when I left university.
Just by using computers I got good enough at two-fingers-plus-a-couple-of-others typing that I can effectively touch type with them [that half sentence done with my eyes shut with no errors], but I never learned proper ten fingered touch typing despite a couple of half-hearted attempts. I could get a not-embarrassing speed when I tried, but not as fast as mum who did learn, but I've almost never needed to type fast so I've never gained any stamina, I can only really do short bursts of high wpm.
I've *seen* typewriters, but I can't remember if I've ever seen a typewriter which was used as the most convenient method of typing.
Most people started using facebook at university, but it didn't have a wall yet, it was more like an address book than a social site. I started using livejournal towards the end of university because lots of my friends did (my resolution to only blog things I thought people would want to read was futile). I bought a dreamwidth permanent account when it came out, as I wanted to support it's development. And I didn't get into twitter for a while as I wasn't sure what I wanted to tweet (I remember muddling through the 'send a text message' thing) until one eastercon when it was very useful and then I just started tweeting stuff after that.