Way way back in L.A., I had a job from 11 p.m.to 7 a.m. searching for checks on a microfilm and taking "photos" of them that I piled in a basket. I finished my work after about an hour and used the rest of the night napping and rotating among the big empty room, trying out everyone's desk and IBM Selectric typewriter. At home, I put my little Corona typewriter on a pedestal and stood typing.
Shortly after that, I moved to New York and lived with a lover in graduate school who had a computer in 1987. She was the first person I knew with a computer; how early you made each leap in home technology was more class based, then; or at the very least, income based—our incomes were very different. (We went to Europe for two months. She spent her allowance. I spent my life's savings.) Anyway, she had a big clunky computer which seemed amazingly high-tech at the time. I can't remember the brand but I remember she had a dot matrix printer. So I had access to computers earlier than I might have, on my own. Thank you, my long ago Ex!
When we broke up, I lived alone, but eventually moved in with someone else, and had the money to buy my own, first computer.
Again, I don't remember the brand, but I remember using WordPerfect, the precursor to MicroSoft Word.
Then I made a huge leap with a new Gateway, and the big box that was black-and-white like a Guernsey cow sat in our living room like a shrine to the future.
And that's when I got my first Internet email account, AOL, some time in the late nineties. A lot of people over 45 or so still have their AOL accounts; it's like a boomer badge of honor, and I've been sneered at for holding on to it, but my family and old old friends would get confused if I let it go.
Anyway, here I am in 2012 using the MacBook Air they gave me at work, and I also have a Dell PC that is woefully in need of replacement. I'm planning to get an IMac in 2013. I marvel at the changes in how we write, process information and correspond, that technology has caused.
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