Categories: uncategorized
Date: 09 February 2007 10:56:08
I was born in 1981. At this time, very few homes had personal computers. Many computers didn't have hard drives. Windows was but a sparkle in someones eye. Record players were still used regularly. Not many people had VCRs. Microwaves were available, but not common (and tended to be rather large and scary looking).
When I started primary school in 1987, I think we had a computer. It was made by IBM and was DOS based. But it wasn't IBM-compatible (I could never understand this given that it was an IBM). It didn't have a printer. But it was quite modern because it only had 3.25 inch floppy disks. The internet for regular Joe was science fiction. I was given my first cassette walkman in 1988. The Yay house had a stereo with dual cassette decks, a radio and a record player. It was rather large. We had no VCR and changed the tv channel using a method known as "ambulation and manual twiddling".
By the end of primary school we had our second computer. This one ran Windows 3.1. Oh gosh golly! It was so exciting. Possibly the most exciting bit though was the dot-matrix printer. This opened up a whole new world for me with the terrible writing. Hah! My teacher loved computers and would give extra marks for typed assignments. So I both didn't get marked down for bad writing AND was marked UP for avoiding bad writing! I think we bought our first VCR and microwave when I was in year 6. I bought a cookbook for kids with microwaves. My favourite recipe was a scone ring. My mother recently destroyed all my childhood memories of cooking prowess by mentioning that the scone ring wasn't very nice... but but everyone said it was delicious..
The end of high school saw the Yay family connected to the internet on a computer with 6.4 gigabytes of hard drive and running Win98. The internet connection was dial up, with 50 hours per month (how could we possibly use that much?!) with crazy charges for using more than our amount. When the first few bills started coming through for $80/month, the parents agreed to switch to an unlimited hours plan. Which was less money than the original one anyway. A few of the rich kids at school had broadband, but most of us were on 56k dial up. I started flirting with the idea of instant messaging and used ICQ for a while. But because not many people had both a computer they could use frequently AND an internet connection AND an interest in talking to me, I didn't do much chatting. My father had just acquired his first mobile phone which the brothers and I borrowed occasionally but really had no idea how to use. One person in my classes at school had their own mobile. But as no-one else did, they didn't use it very often.
The end of my first university degree four years later saw the Yay family computer collection expanded to a desktop (still Win98, but with new monitor, printer, hard drives, RAM and CD drive) and TWO laptops. We had also bought a DVD player and a wireless router which directed the dial up connection to the three computers. I had my first MP3 player (it was a 256M memory stick that came free with my laptop) and my brother had a minidisc player/recorder. The younger brother and I both had mobile phones, bought for us by the parents. The other brother is a luddite.
Now, in the second year of my second degree (and with two years of work in between), the house contains (as well as like furniture and stuff)
* two desktop computers
* four laptop computers (three functional - one linux, one windows, one mac), five when the older brother comes over.
* another CPU that is connected to the peripherals of one of the desktops via a KVM switch
* a hard drive recorder with twin digital tuners, and no VCR
* an additional digital set top box
* a 6gig MP3 player
* two ipod shuffles (free from drug companies)
* three functional mobile phones
* five obsolete mobile phones
What on EARTH is the world going to be like by the time I retire?