My computing days began, as for so many others of my age, with the home computer boom of the early 1980s. Up until 1982/83, I had no real idea that "ordinary people" had computers in their own homes. My eyes were opened after seeing a friend using his Sinclair ZX81 (called a Timex in the USA, I believe?). At Christmas 1983, after the usual "hard sell" to my mother, extolling the "educational benefits" to be derived, I received my first computer, the iconic ZX Spectrum.
The computers of that era were hugely limited and primitive by today's standards, but they had a magic and a fallibility that was strangely endearing, and a stark contrast to today's "templated" world. The technical limitations were part of the magic. There was no social element to the 1980s boom, from my perspective. The only "networking" was a bit of desultory schoolyard chatter about the machines and games themselves.
As with other youth sub-cultures, in the early to mid 1980s teenagers split into factions, owing their allegiance to a particular computer, and vehemently defending them against the contempt of others. As a Spectrum owner, the main "rival" groups were those people who favoured either the Commodore 64 or the BBC Micro.
C64 users tended to denigrate us because of the "superior" specification of their machine. It even had a proper keyboard! The BBC clique, on the other hand, evinced a different kind of "superiority", based on the notion that the Micro was more suited to intellectual and erudite pursuits, unsullied by what they viewed as our juvenile inclinations. This "tribalism" seems foolish and petty now, although I guess it was innocuous enough when pursued by adolescents. I wish the same could be said about similar antagonisms practised in the 21st century by "grown ups"...
By about 1985/86, the appeal of computers was beginning to diminish, as other distractions intervened. My computer was consigned to a dusty corner, and fell into disuse, looking increasingly forlorn. I can't even precisely recall what became of it. It must have fall victim to some "spring cleaning" in the late 1980s or early 1990s. Apart from using PCs at work, my only contact with the IT world came with a brief flirtation with the idea of buying an Amiga...
It was only eight or nine years ago that I got another computer, and this was only because it was virtually given to me by a relative. Yes, the internet is wonderful, and I couldn't live without it, but I still look back with fondness and nostalgia at those far off days of miniscule memory, erratic power supply units and programs loaded by cassette....
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