After we got home from the beach, my computer died, and then while it was out being repaired, we lost our internet connection, so the laptop was no help. Life does go on, even without the computer! But it is mighty convenient having everything up and running again.
I remember our first computer back in the prehistoric days. It was an IBM XT and it had 10 megabytes memory in hard drive. Impressive! We had it on a desk in the corner of our bedroom, and Doug used it to write Recovering the Lost Tools of Learning. We printed that puppy out, chapter by chapter, with that (awful) dot matrix on the long sheets that you had to tear on the perforations or else just fold up into a stack. Terrible to read.
How did people write books before computers? It took me a while before I could write an article on the computer rather than with ink and a legal pad. It just didn’t feel right for a long time. But I made the big transition, and it is pretty hard to go back.
It wasn’t that long ago. My kids were school age. We didn’t have cell phones or email and life went on pretty well. We wrote letters; we called. And before our first computer, I typed on an electric typewriter. Imagine life without word processing! Oh the agony of the white-out tape. Back up, type over the mistake with the white-out, back up again, type the correct letter. Tedious business!
Last week I gave a “talk” for the Veritas Teacher Training using a headset and my computer (or rather, the lap top) a day or two before we lost our internet. I went into my “room” and other people on other computers signed in and listened to my talk. I confess to having a butterfly or two beforehand. Very weird way to give a talk. You just don’t know if people are falling asleep, if they are laughing at your jokes, or if they are following along or not. But it was kind of fun to try something new. Very techie.
So enough of my reflections on the machine I don’t understand on my desk. And how strange that I can hit a few buttons and you can find these rambling thoughts on your screen in your house on your desk far away.
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My husband used one of those old computers to write up his PhD. I typed his honours thesis up on one of those old type-writers – working over a round, pregnant tum. Our (now) 24 year old son is very amused at such recollections. Old fashioned is nice sometimes, but oh how much I thank God for this new technology!! Thank you so much for using it to bless and encourage others.
I think those are some fun reflections. 🙂 I had no internet service for roughly two days this last week and initially was feeling pretty agitated. I was reminded of something your husband wrote once about being aware of the temptations that come with technology. With the enjoyment of such convenience as we experience in the age of computers, it’s easy to forget that that doesn’t give me a free pass to grumble over the loss of it. It helps to remember that whiteout tape you mentioned!
I know exactly what you mean about not knowing if your audience is following along or falling asleep. I teach a couple classes on-line (beginning my seventh year of it this fall), and it took me awhile to get used to *not* seeing the people I was talking to. I always choose to believe they are fascinated and hanging on my every word. 🙂
I did a few A Beka classes, and I admit I fell asleep a couple of times. (Of course I went back and watched them again.) But if the teacher was good, I loved them even if they couldn’t keep me awake sometimes.
Loved the last paragraph!
Our first computer was a used Mac 128. We thought we were pretty cool. We used it to write papers in grad school. Yes, I remember the dot matrix printer and having to tear the perforations between pages.
On a side note: My mother-in-law still uses her MANUAL typewriter to type library cards etc. for her small church library. She is content, not wanting to do it differently! She is also a wonderful mother-in-law!
Technology is a marvelous gift, and so is the picture of your beautiful clean desk.
It stands in stark contrast to my desk which is a little dustier and has the little stacks of work belonging to myself and the four big kids who share this computer with me.
I’m going to get us all tidied up this afternoon.
Thank you for your inspiration. Again.
I couldn’t agree with Missy any more. I am feeling the need to go clean and beautify my desk now!!!
My first computer was a Commodore Vic 20. If you spent hours programming it, you could make little bird-looking things fly across the screen. You couldn’t make the printer print an 80 character across page–only 40! So, I used a manual typewriter–no white out tape–to type school papers. We just couldn’t afford anything else at the time. What took my friends about an hour to type up, took me about 10 for all the pages I had to re-do. I remember saving up for a word processor, and that was the best thing EVER! 🙂