Can you imagine what life would be like without a computer? I’m old enough that I don’t need to imagine it – I can remember it.
Our family’s first computer arrived when I was about 11 years old. I was part of the 1980s home computer boom in the UK – the generation that grew up with the BBC Micro, Sinclair ZX Spectrum, Commodore 64, and Amstrad CPC 464. We didn’t have any of those. My Dad bought an “MSX” – an attempt by the electronics giants of the day (Sony, Toshiba, Sanyo, Yamaha, Panasonic, etc) to create compatible computers. It didn’t go well.
The MSX was eventually upstaged by an Atari ST, and then a succession of PCs, video game consoles, mobile phones, tablets, laptops, and whatever else. There’s a Raspberry Pi propped on the desk behind me – which many might argue is a spiritual descendent of the BBC that sort-of started it all in the UK (if you’ve not seen the dramatisation “Micro Men”, I implore you to look it up).
So yes. I was around before.
A childhood without computers was filled with all sorts of activities that people with very thick rose tinted spectacles spend inordinate amounts of time reminiscing about – invariably claiming that somehow life was somehow much better then. I tend to disagree, for all sorts of reasons.
Most of the weekends and early evenings during my formative years were spent climbing trees, visiting friends houses, going on bike rides, playing games in the street with neighbourhood kids, visiting nearby play parks, and so on.
My world was small.
Looking back, from the moment we were out-of-sight of the house, our parents had no clue where we were, or how to find us. Our knowledge of anybody in town was via hearsay. An awful lot of local wisdom was the result of whispers, lies, and wild speculation.
If you wanted to find out somebody’s address or phone number, you looked in “the phone book” – a giant printed tome that listed everybody’s phone number in the local area. If you wanted to find a business, you looked in the “Yellow Pages” – a giant printed tome listing every business in the local area. If you wanted to find out how to spell a word, you looked it up in a dictionary.
If you wanted to watch something on the television, you had to wait for it to be broadcast. We didn’t own a video recorder until I was perhaps 10 years old. Before that, if you missed a show, you missed it. Tough luck. I remember staying in one Saturday to watch “The Valley of Gwanji” – a Ray Harryhousen monster movie (I was a dinosaur nut). For whatever reason, the BBC pulled the movie at the last moment. They received thousands of letters of complaint from children across the country.
Those letters of complaint would have been hand-written, or typed on mechanical typewriters and posted in postboxes that still stand on most street corners across the country.
My Uncle moved to the United States when I was very young. Throughout my childhood our only contact with him was either through letters, or a once a year transatlantic phone call that cost a significant amount of money. I remember patiently waiting in turn for a few seconds to say hello.
Banking involved going to the bank. End of story. The bank was only open during certain hours of the day, and there were no cashpoints. Most people were paid in cash, and paid it into the bank to earn interest. If you ran out of money, and the bank was shut, that was it – you couldn’t do anything that involved money until it re-opened. Paying for anything directly from your bank account involved writing a cheque, or filling in a receipt with a carbon paper duplicate kept by the store. Transferring money via paper cheques took days.
My Aunt worked for the family business as a book-keeper. She wrote T accounts, day books, ledgers, and journals by hand. Trial balances and balance sheets were written and calculated on huge pieces of lined paper, relying on mental arithmetic. Did you know that if your answer for a calculation is out by a quantity divisible by 9, it means you’ve transposed some digits somewhere? Well now you do…
All of these experiences have been made immeasurably better by computers, and latterly the internet (computers talking to computers).
At a moment’s notice I can find out where my children are, and can tell them when dinner will be. I can talk to my American family any time I want. I can see and hear them as clearly as if they were sitting in the room with me. I can send messages to the other side of the world instantaneously. I can pay, and be paid to or from anybody in the world, instantaneously, at any time of day. I can find out almost anything about a breaking news story immediately – and get different perspectives on the story from different sources. Accounting has been transformed – with spreadsheets and accounting software changing the world of business immeasurably. I can watch any TV show I want, when I want, and jump to any moment in the show instantaneously. I can listen to any music I want by any artist, at a moment’s notice. I can buy any book I want, and have it in my hand to read in seconds.
None of these things were possible before computers.
Having all of these abilities and opportunities isn’t without cost though. We are never truly disconnected any more. We are never completely offline. We are always aware that a cacophonous, fast, chaotic world is turning all around us, all the time. It’s no surprise that anxiety has become such a prevalent issue.
A few years ago I downgraded from a smartphone to a basic Nokia candy bar phone for a few months. It was glorious. And frustrating.