The speed of the change is also fascinating to me.
My brother is 5.5 years younger than me, and was six grades behind me. When I started at Ohio State in the fall of 1993 only one guy on my entire floor of about 100 had a pc and there were obviously no laptops, tablets, smartphones, etc. There were two word processors which you might be familiar with and kids of today would have no concept of. Word processors were like half a computer. You typed a document into them and they printed it. They had a tiny screen that showed a few lines of text but this was a HUGE improvement on typewriters because you could actually make changes to the document without starting over.
Six years later when I helped move my brother to Ohio State in the fall of 1999 he and his three roommates had a combined total of six computers because everybody had a PC and two of the four had laptops as well.
I realize that is only an anecdote and not solid data but I would guess that it is somewhere near correct overall and based on that we went from:
- 0.01 computers per student in 1993 to
- 1.5 computers per student in 1999
Even if my anecdote is off by a LOT, the difference is still enormous.
My parents bought their first PC right about the time I left for college and I never owned my own PC or laptop while I was in college so the first time I had a PC of my own was after I graduated. Amazing how much different that world was from this one.
Agreed... I wasn't that far behind--graduated HS in 1996--only three years.
I will say that my parents were on the computer train very early, unlike yours.
We got a Commodore 64 when I was 5, so around 1983, but then only two years later we got an IBM XT. My parents used that for some of their tax stuff, word processing, etc. I actually used to get paid I think ten cents per receipt to put their receipts into the tax software because back in those days you could itemize and claim sales tax as a deduction on your federal taxes. That was based on DOS, and my dad's friend gave me a bunch of DOS-based ASCII computer games. I remember my buddy and I playing (but never beating) Ultima V on that, and also playing Leisure Suit Larry when my folks didn't know what we were up to lol...
Around 1989 they upgraded to a Windows-based PC, which I think was a 386. My dad (an architect) always planned to learn CAD, so he needed something that had the horsepower to run it. Around 1992 they upgraded again to a 486, and I basically took over all computer management for the household.
Over those years of high school until 1996, I went from checking out BBS systems to operating my own, getting into computer gaming, eventually seeing the world of AOL followed by AOL only really being a portal to run Netscape and get me out to the "world wide web"...
By the fall of 1996 and getting to Purdue, not *everyone* had a computer, but it was common.
So I think you may have grown up in a PC-free world, but despite being only 3 years younger than you, I had started learning PCs almost a decade earlier than your parents got one.
lol, we literally called those brick cell phones the "Zach Morris phone"......my dad had the bag phone in his truck. I was pretty lucky - we had a PC with AOL and all that as soon as I was entering high school.
I took a typing class FR year of HS.....I think that would blow kids away today - that adults would take typing classes, or that I did in HS.
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Today, kindergarten teachers have to be mindful to have students physically write with a paper and pencil so that it is not a lost skill - more so with this online-only year.
Typing was a great class. My mom forced me to take it freshman year of HS, and I'm really glad she did. I don't ever have to think about typing; I think of words and my fingers just subconsciously translate them onto the screen. I'm fast enough at it that my typing skills occur at the speed I'm actually forming the sentences, so it purely is "think it and it shows up on the screen".
I personally HATE manually writing anything. I'm left-handed, so I have to crook my wrist to keep from smudging what I just wrote. I get hand cramps after literally a few sentences of writing. I have mostly forgotten how to write in cursive; I can do it but not without conscious thought.
Typing is preferred for me. And on a real keyboard, not a stupid smartphone screen. Nothing else (smartphone or manual script/printing) can keep up with me to actually be in a flow.
