Community Chat

[HerRoyaLioness]

It was love at first sight - I got a home computer as soon as I could!  My son says he was one of the only ones in his class with a computer at home!

I remember DOS, then Windows!

Of course you had to be careful even back then and so much more so now, but I love it!

[SilleeMee]

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@deepwaterdotter wrote:

The potential for invasion into personal information.

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I heard someone say once that we're all going to h*ll in a handbasket b/c of the internet. That person might not be too far from the truth.

[aroc3435]

@Sooner   No, I don't think so.  I was creating card decks to record students and their courses and grades from the professors for the private university for which I worked.  It was a step up from typing each student transcript by hand in the registrar's office in one of its graduate school.

DARPA would be part of the governmen so no, I don't think a graduate school for music performance would be related to that.

I had enough trouble converting from a manual to an electric typewriter to an IBM MAG card (used that briefly) to computers.

To this day I still love the feel of an IBM selectric typewriter.

aroc3435

Washington, DC

[Kalli]

I went to grad school when my kids were little. Back then, getting online from home meant dialing into a private server run by a computer nerd in his own home. There were actually two guys near our small college town who ran a BBS from home. Both sank their own money into their systems, and when you dialed in, you had access to discussion boards and email. That’s where I read about the internet for the first time and at that time it was accessible from the campus library, I believe.

Anyway, when calling a private BBS if there was a busy signal you had to hang up and wait to try again! There were mostly college and HS techie types who used these and almost all were males. Learned a lesson then about creating an online name. The first time I logged in, I used my real name which obviously was female.  I got several emails from local HS guys asking me which area HS I went to and which grade I was in! 😆😆😆

[jeanlake]

wow - great question. First I was introduced to a dos computer at work -- MS-DOS version 1982. I was office manager at a non-profit org and we used it to keep track of donors. We received some training but president and I worked our way through the processes. He was a retired priest - math major so he was giddy. The copy paper was connected and tore apart and was a hassle to load. Floppy discs were used; labeled and stored. I was used to working on a Selectric 2 typewriter that had up to 8,000 programed characters in electronic memory. I thought we were the Jetsons using that treasure. 

I taught typing for 4 years so I wasn't a stranger to equipment, but world wide web - internet - was from a different planet altogether. Early 90s. Working at a college at this time. We had employee training on the web and I remember a guy quit over it. Something about the devil and end times. I think he was overwhelmed and didn't want to admit it. 

Hubs taught a business communications evening class. He gave me a serious look one day and said all the letters and memos that are written will some day flow into Emails and new business communications books will need to be written to factor this in. Rules would change. 

He was correct and the change was great for administrative assistants who lessened time standing by copy machine, typing other peoples' letters or filing.        

[Sooner]

@aroc3435 LOL!!!  NO.  I have several friends who are music profs.  No.  They sometimes have a tumultuous relationship with technology. 

[Lipstickdiva]

Anyone remember Wang computers?  When I started my first "big girl" job, that was what we had.  

[pitdakota]

All I can remember is thinking about how slow it was and that awful sound it made.  LOL!     I think the first thing I did the most with was learning email. lol

I still marvel today at the ability to do a lit search. Having internet access to  University's literature search engine was a huge time saver.  Back when I was in graduate school and my first days of teaching at the university level, I had to physically walk into a library and use their database to do a lit. search.  So much easier just to sign on to the library and search away!!  lol

[silkyk]

When the internet just really started cooking at the same time that Mayan 2000 prediction of a big world change/end of the world etc talk was going on.....well I thought this is what the Mayans were talking about! The Internet has changed EVERYTHING.It became a new smaller world with ALL our human knowledge available in a little machine you can hold in your hand. And it happened right around the time those Mayans said a major world change would occur.It sure did.

[MildredM]

Our first monitor was the green and then we moved onto the amber and now the full color... LOL....