February 14, 2011

Valentine’s Day Memories

Filed under: Main — admin @ 12:01 am

This is an article I published in a San Diego computer magazine back in 1985. It’s copied here in its entirety.

What If Our Computers Turned Into Girls?
by Dan Gookin

A group of computer whiz kids, all of them about fourteen years old (give or take twenty years), were sitting around one afternoon copying programs and discussing life in the electronic fast lane.

Now, I won’t admit to personally knowing any of these kids. In fact, I won’t even admit that the one called “Dan” is any relation to me or anyone my height. And I’m not apologizing for making all these computer hackers men — uh, boys. It just so happens there are a lot of boys in computing. When the women come up to 50%, I’ll write an article titled “What If Our Computers Turned Into Boys.” Until then, here’s what happened one July day a few summers ago…or so I’m told.

Dan, Morgan, Jerry and Ryan were sitting in the computer club house. They were bored. The power was out on their street which meant their electronic activities had come to a halt.

Of course Ryan, being the most inventive, could have continued computing. He installed a car battery up to his Atari ST just in case of a power outage. However, if he now let the others know
they’d all come over and bug him. So he faked computer death.

Normally this time of day, the boys would have all their computers hooked into Morgan’s Apple. He had written a program where they could all call his computer on the phone and type in messages to each other. Now they just sat around, their thoughts wandering, the conversation relaxed.

After a while, Jerry commented, “This is neat you guys! This is just like what we do ‘on-line’ expect we’re all talking with each other in person.”

“And we don’t have to read Dan’s bad spelling,” Ryan added.

“Hey! I’m working on an on-line spelling checker for my Mac, so watch out!” Dan replied. The others cowered in mock terror.

Jerry sighed. After a while he became aware of something and made a comment which caused quite a stir. He realized it was a Saturday afternoon in the middle of July. Most of the other
guys, the normal kids, were at the beach. And they were looking at and occasionally talking with . . . girls!

“Why don’t we have any girls in the club?” Jerry asked.

“None of them possess computers,” Ryan answered.

“Diane’s dad has a PC,” Morgan commented. “But he would beat her up if she touched it.”

“She was in my Cobol class last year…” Dan began.

Jerry interrupted — as he often did. “I don’t think you guys get my point. There are no girls in this club! But do any of us ever talk to any girls?”

“They all have cooties,” Dan pointed out.

“That’s absurd,” Morgan remarked. “Cooties were wiped out in the ’60s.”

“Hold on,” Jerry exclaimed. “That’s not what I meant. We all spend so much time on our computers, using our modems, programming, or just goofing off. Don’t any of you ever think about girls?”

Dan, Morgan and Ryan exchanged glances. Then they said, in unison, “No.”

“Jerry,” Morgan started, “you couldn’t even think of taking a girl out! That would cost money! How much does a date cost? Anyone know? Dan?”

“Uh,” he made some mental calculations. “$8.50. That was seven dollars for the movie, a dollar for popcorn, and I paid my little sister fifty cents to sit in another row.”

“$8.50! That’s ten disks! Jerry! Think of the program’s you could copy onto those ten disks! Have you lost your mind?”

“No. I’m serious.”

Ryan thought a while. Then, with all the wisdom he could muster, he came to a conclusion. “Guys, I think this curiosity about girls is important to our social development. True, we have
mental capabilities far beyond those of normal humans. But we lack social etiquette. It’s my strong feeling that computers have supplanted women in our daily existence.”

“In English, Ryan,” Dan jested.

Morgan said, “He’s right. We all spend so much time with our computers that we don’t need girls!”

“Wrong. That’s not what I said,” Ryan corrected. “Our computers have surrogated girls. Yet, they are not an adequate replacement either from a social or personal relationship perspective.”

“That’s interesting you point this out Jerry,” Dan said glumly. “Or are you just having trouble writing your hard disk backup program for your Amiga?”

“No. Not at all,” Jerry said. He paused and wondered for a moment. Then an interesting question popped into his head. He said it aloud, “What if, all of the sudden, our computers became girls?”

Morgan laughed, “I’d be out of a job.”

“No. I’m serious. How would we treat them? What would they be like? How would they treat us?”

“It’s a stupid question, Jerry,” Dan noted. “It will never happen.”

“But if it did, how would we react? Could we handle it?”

Before the boys could ponder the question further, the power came on again. They said goodbye, then scurried off to their respective rooms. Each of them finished their day of computer “hacking.” Not one of them thought of the question Jerry posed earlier: What if their computers became girls?

However, later that night, as the four boys slept, they all had nightmares of a most unusual kind. In fact, Dan’s nightmare was just beginning . . .

4 Comments

  1. That’s interesting you use the word on-line in it several times, and sending text messages to their computers, pretty forward thinking considering it was 1985.

    Comment by chiefnoobie — February 14, 2011 @ 2:55 am

  2. I got my first modem in 1982. There were online communities back then, mostly in the form of hosted systems called Bulletin Boards or BBSs. It was usually a dedicated (or not) computer with a single line (or not) and only one person could use it at a time. Some folks had multi-line systems, and there were networks. I hosted a store-and-forward system in 1986 called ProLine that actually would talk with the ARPAnet, transferring mail and messages. Pretty much everything you see in place now was available then. We didn’t have the speed, of course, nor the population.

    Comment by admin — February 14, 2011 @ 8:03 am

  3. Thinking about what type computers were about at the time in the UK it was the BBC micro master the Micro chip boom in the 80’s, I don’t think there was anyway of doing email they were too basic but I suppose the first Apple Mac was introduced in 1984 the first computer using a Windows based system, even though it took years to catch on so I suppose emails would have been possible. you just had to know someone who had another computer and set up (and wanted to talk to you!)

    Comment by chiefnoobie — February 14, 2011 @ 1:20 pm

  4. Most of the communications was via BBS or other systems, where you could send or receive private messages. There was also CompuServe. If you were adventurous, you could phone up someone directly and chat. A jilted guy did that to me. He was my then-girlfriend’s X and he phoned me up with his modem several times. Eventually I hooked up my modem to answer and then he started typing at me what a jerk I was.

    I was in the UK in 1985 to research computer systems. I remember using a Sinclair and an Acorn. I wrote notes about the other ones, but after so many years . . .

    Comment by admin — February 14, 2011 @ 2:15 pm

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