When my daughter was little, she was overly\u00a0intrigued with computers.\u00a0 But since she spoke like a Russian \u00c9migr\u00e9 from the ages of one through three, the word came out as, \u201cpew-ter,\u201d like she was visiting Paul Revere\u2019s smithyworks from the Motherland for the first time and was in awe of all his artsy platters and such.<\/p>\n
\u201cPewter.\u201d<\/p>\n
Clearly this girl knows a little sumthin\u2019 sumthin\u2019 \u2018bout computers and that early fascination hasn\u2019t gone away; She remains interested in\u00a0technology \u2013 lately,\u00a0the role of technology in my life when I was her age.\u00a0 \u201cWhat was YOUR technology class like when you were my age, Mom?\u201d<\/p>\n
Uhhh\u2026my technology class was reading through the instruction book to figure out how to play tic-tac-toe on Merlin, the Electronic Wizard, when I was your age, Sweetie.<\/em><\/p>\n Technology, in the form of computers, didn\u2019t come into my life on a regular basis until the late 80\u2019s and I was at the tail end of my college career.<\/p>\n You know what’s funny about that?\u00a0\u00a0I just received a mailing about my college reunion\u2026and guess what was on the front of the mailing?\u00a0 A picture of my college computer class circa 1989!\u00a0 The students are all wearing their gigantor tortoise-shell glasses which take up the majority of their faces.\u00a0 Not to be outdone in size, the computers are the approximate dimensions of a\u00a0dog house\u00a0and are perched on wooden planks laid over sawhorses.\u00a0 Ha, ha, kidding about the sawhorse set-up, they\u2019re on banquet tables clearly pulled from the student dining hall.<\/em><\/p>\n Anyway, what\u2019s particularly enjoyable\u00a0about the\u00a0picture is that there are THREE students for every ONE computer, like computers were so precious you couldn\u2019t have just ONE student per computer or anything.\u00a0 And the computers themselves were those yellowing-from-the-heat-or-too-many-students-clustered-around-breathing-on-them DOS Prompt thingamajigs.\u00a0 The whole thing was precious!<\/p>\n So I turned it over to \u2018Pewter Princess for a look-see.\u00a0 Her response?\u00a0 \u201cYikes.\u201d<\/p>\n Uh-huh.\u00a0 Yikes indeed, My Dear.\u00a0 Yikes, indeed.<\/em><\/p>\n P.S. I had a college roommate who was a Computer Science major.\u00a0 Beep boop.<\/em>\u00a0 Every time I say \u201cComputer Science\u201d beep boop<\/em> I have to say beep boop<\/em> because the name alone makes me think of automatons and\/or Joshua from War Games.\u00a0 Would you like to play a game, Professor?<\/em>\u00a0 \u00a0Anyway, for her work-release program, this roommate had to assist students in the Computer Science Lab beep boop<\/em> which I recall being housed in the windowless basement of the Business Management building.\u00a0 And?\u00a0 It may have been work-study, not work-release.\u00a0 And??\u00a0 There may have been windows, they were just painted black and the students would scratch\u00a0“send help” messages on the windows with their fingernails.\u00a0 See?\u00a0 It\u2019s more fun to make it sound like Computer Science beep boop<\/em> was the gritty underbelly of a liberal arts education in the late 80\u2019s.\u00a0 Anywho…at the end of summer break our Junior year, this Computer Science major beep boop<\/em> returned to school telling us all about how these supercomputers beep boop<\/em> were being connected across the United States which would allow people to \u201ctalk\u201d to other people.\u00a0 Through the computer!\u00a0 Beep boop. <\/em>\u00a0In fact, they were also being connected with other\u00a0countries and she had even \u201cmet\u201d a guy in Canada or parts-north that way.\u00a0 Another friend and I, hearing this crazy talk, laughed ourselves silly.\u00a0 Computers that are somehow connected?\u00a0 And allow people to \u201ctalk\u201d to eachother no matter where they are?!?\u00a0 HAAHAHAHHAAHAHAHAHA!\u00a0 What a stupid idea.\u00a0 That will never catch on.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" When my daughter was little, she was overly\u00a0intrigued with computers.\u00a0 But since she spoke like a Russian \u00c9migr\u00e9 from the ages of one through three, the word came out as, \u201cpew-ter,\u201d like she was visiting Paul Revere\u2019s smithyworks from the Motherland for the first time and was in awe of all his artsy platters and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/newstayathomemom.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4195"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/newstayathomemom.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/newstayathomemom.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newstayathomemom.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newstayathomemom.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4195"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/newstayathomemom.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4195\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4197,"href":"https:\/\/newstayathomemom.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4195\/revisions\/4197"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/newstayathomemom.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4195"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newstayathomemom.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4195"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newstayathomemom.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4195"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}