My first computer was a Mac SE. That was 1989. It was a workplace device, so it wasn't really mine. I used it to design brochures and annual reports … full color, viewed on a black and white monitor. There was no internet, but the eventual addition of After Dark gave me flying toasters to stare at. A primitive version of King's Quest provided the heady option of playing on company time. I became so addicted to King's Quest that a bartender called the office at 8:15 one night to see if I was okay.
Back then, this device unexpectedly thrust me into what felt like the future. I was ripped from the fraternal domain of t-squares and rubber cement and callously shoved into a world of diskettes (ask your parents) and software manuals (which I never read) and shifting, elusive terminology that still makes me feel like the dog ate my homework. But, for a few short years, I also felt like a member of an exclusive club. I knew things. (Things I absolutely could not explain, so don't even ask.) Eventually, an offhanded conversation with a cab driver about sans-serif fonts helped me realize that I was just another primate tethered to a computer. And ... everyone had a computer. And so did their kids. And those kids could explain things.
Thanks to an accommodating client, I now have a Mac Pro that looks like Robocop's carry-on, a flat screen monitor with millions of colors (actually, there are only three colors) and a wireless modem the size of a personal pan pizza box that throws off enough blinking light to illuminate my apartment. There is also a telephone attached that serenades me with a dial tone when I lift the receiver. It's that dial tone that keeps me from flying off into the future again.
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