Copyrights reserved by the author. If you are in doubt, please click on 'Copyrights' and read the details.A history of the computer according to me. Part I By J. G. Fabiano My God, I am addicted. I never thought I would say this but it is now crystal clear this is exactly what I am. I wake up in the morning yearning to start my day by doing this. Then during every one of my days I am perpetually looking for the means and the ways of continuing my addiction. When I get home I fly up to my office to continue to do what I’ve been doing throughout the day until the very hour I am forced to go to bed. But, before I do I catch one last time to attempt to satisfy my growing compulsion. My wife calls it Dolores and I am beginning to think she is right. Innocently I bought my first computer almost a quarter century ago. I even remember its name. It was a Commodore-64. I thought it was cool I could hook it up to a small black and white television set and take control of what I wanted to see. I clearly remember setting it up on top of my bar in my first home. I also remember the excitement of hooking up all of the wires and connecting a large rectangular piece of plastic onto the back of the TV that would normally hold the antenna. What excited me most was when I turned the button on it actually worked. I had visions of becoming a great computer whiz producing programs that would astound everyone to the point of considering me the new giant of the computer world. For the next couple of minutes I stared at the perfectly squared plot of light blinking on the upper left hand corner of the TV. After that got a bit old I placed my hand on the keyboard hoping something would happen when I pushed on its keys. Again I was astounded because little light filled letters following the blinking white square of light. I then ran bunches of letters together wondering where all this was going to take me. I actually ran a sentence from one my father always used when he showed me how he could type. It was: "Now is the time for all young men to come to the aid of their country." To this day I can blast out that sentence to the point any executive of a large corporation would love to have me employed in his office. After a few weeks of writing sentence after sentence of worthless information I decided to buy a printer that could put the words on my screen to paper. To my absolute shock the printer actually worked. After I typed that now famous sentence I pushed the button that said ‘print’ and the large white box started to shriek a sound only another owner of a dot-matrix machine could describe. It actually hurt as the bar that magically produced the words shot back and forth on the paper. I remember my wife running into the room wondering what was going on and if I was still alive or electrocuted by my newest of toys. I think to her surprise I was still breathing. But, I remember that look on her face that foreshadowed what would take place in our future. In other words, I believe she saw a bit of the addiction in my eyes. I programmed my first work on that machine. It was the pong game. I was incredibly proud it actually worked. Of course, I did not make up the program but rather painfully typed page after page of incomprehensible text from a book I had purchased called, "The wonderful world of advanced basic". I had that machine for over a year before I knew I needed a new and more powerful one. I talked my wife into buying a Commodore-128 that promised to be twice as powerful as the one that came before it. I promised her this would be the last of my purchases because how could they possibly come out with a more powerful computer. Needless to say I was wrong. I purchased my next machine from a company that promised to take over the world of technology. It also came with multiple games and computer programs that would make everything I did in life easier. It promised to balance my checkbook, organize all of my important and not so important dates, and to even plan for my future so I could live out the twilight of my years on some tropical paradise. At least this is what the cover on the box said. The name of the machine was the Apple IIe. Since I was now teaching and all the computers in the school were of the same type I convinced my wife I had to have this machine in order to do my work. For some odd reason she agreed and into the world of ‘Apple’ I flew. I actually thought my compulsion for bigger and better had been satiated by this newest of purchases. I did not know there was a new monster coming in from the horizon of what everyone now called cyber space. It was called the Internet. At first I never thought it would take off but then it was obvious anyone who wasn’t connected to the world would be leaving the world behind them. Like setting up my first computer, setting up my first Internet connection was just as exciting. I plugged in the many wires that went from my new computer that was named after some old telephone company to the telephone connection on my wall. There was a new company born from this technology. It was called America On-Line, AOL for short. In order to connect to the Internet one had to set up an account with them. It wasn’t too expensive so I gave into my new compulsion and ran into the information highway. The only problem was the AOL charge was not the only charge one had to worry about. There was a thing called the telephone bill. Back then every time you used the phone you were forced to pay a fee especially if the number was not local. Mine was not. I think I am still paying for that first telephone bill born from AOL. My wife tells me the addiction kicked into high gear as soon as I fell into the Internet. I could not believe what things I could see from all over the world. The biggest problem was the time it took to get this information into my machine. Everyone remembers that blue bar that painfully drifted across the screen promising to drive you nuts because every now and then it would just stop. This also explains the giant phone bill I was forced to suffer through. At first I thought it was the connection but after talking with people who were becoming as addicted as I was I discovered it was my computer. It was too small and too weak. Again I had to convince my wife I needed a stronger and faster machine. She agreed only after I persuaded her I could run her entire business using the new machine. The new Dell did have the capacity to complete all of her business affairs from tax preparation to the production of all her merchandizing products but it also opened up a world I have yet to figure out. The End.
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