Computers Everywhere

There’s been a noticeable increase in the amount of technology, specifically computers, in my house since I was little.  According to my mom, my first real experience with using a computer at home was when I was two. It was one of those large, tan desktop computers and all I did was play games on it. Still, my experience with computers began very early, early enough that I don’t remember my own first encounter with computers in 1998. I think that’s strange considering that home computers weren’t really a common thing until the 1980’s.

            My personal earliest memory of computers was a few years later when I was about six. My dad and I used to sit together and play this one game that was full of math questions. I don’t remember how it exactly worked, but you had to do basic addition and subtraction to move onto the next level. If I tried to play it now, there would be a few problems. One, I’m pretty sure we threw it away a long time ago. Two, I’m pretty sure I could pass all the levels easily. Three, it wouldn’t be compatible with the computer I’m typing this story up on, so I’d have to go grab another computer to use it. The last one sticks out because now I can casually say, “Oh, this game isn’t compatible with my laptop’s operating system, so let’s go grab another one that nobody is using right now,” when I could have never said that back when I was six.

            Apparently no one in my house is one hundred percent sure, but the consensus seems to be that we got our first laptop in our house when I was about eight. It was a blue Dell laptop and it was my mom. It was absolutely massive compared to laptops today and weighed easily three, more likely four, times as much as the laptop I’m using now. Also, it would be incredibly slow to me now, but when my mom got it, there wasn’t anything more in the world that I wanted to play with than that laptop. I thought it was the coolest thing that had ever existed. I didn’t get to use it that often because it was my mom’s and I didn’t have a reason to use it since there aren’t a lot of papers to be written in third grade, but I still wanted to.

            I have absolutely no idea how many laptops we’ve had in our house since that first one. I don’t exactly remember my first laptop since all of mine we’re given to me after my mom got a new one. They blend together for me. Three laptops have died in our house, not all of them mine, and one of them within the last month. I got my first brand new laptop for my last birthday. My mom has finally settled with her current laptop, so I don’t think we’ll be getting a new one soon.

            In my lifetime, there used to be a singular desktop that we didn’t necessarily use every single day. Now, we have double the amount of computers than we do people and three of them get used for hours on end every single day. With that continued, every day use, has come a dependence upon each of our specific chosen computers working. Over the summer when my laptop’s screen was broken, I had to send it away for not even a week and it was like suddenly I had absolutely nothing to do. I had “nothing to do” even though there are more laptops in the house, even though I have a phone, even though I have friends I could’ve hung out with, even though there were plenty of other things to do, I still acted like I had nothing to do and complained about not having my laptop. My parents are exactly the same way now too. Without our computers, we all end up cranky and we complain a lot. It’s a weird thing to think that in fourteen years absolutely everything about computers and technology as a whole changed in my own house. If I try and imagine the three of us sharing one computer, the only possible ending is disaster simply because we all need and want computers for different things at the same time. What worked back then doesn’t even being to work now.