Write about your first computer.
When I was a child I dreamed about the future. It involved computers and AI. I realize now that the future is already here.
My first contact ever with a computer was when I was a very young, like eight years old. It feels like it happened just yesterday. My mom and dad took me and my brother to an Expo fair. They were looking at some of the stands. Meanwhile, I found a computer with a green monochrome monitor. It was sitting idle there. When I typed things on the keyboard, they appeared on the screen. Of course I didn’t know any commands, but even that basic ability fascinated me. I knew then and there that I needed a computer, it was something stronger than myself.
After that I begun realizing that computers were being introduced little by little in our routine. At the bank where my parents had their chequing accounts, they installed small totems. Customers would enter their info and consult their balances there. It wasn’t an ATM yet, it wasn’t possible to withdraw money, let alone deposit it. But it was already some progress. I would ask my mom to let me type the info and she would let me. Again, that mesmerized me.
If I remember it correctly, my brother and I started pestering our parents to get a computer to ourselves. I remember going with them to a Sears department store back at the 80s. I was so excited! We were there to buy our first computer, a TK83. Looking back at it, this was the humble beginnings of the personal computer era, everything was so rudimentary. I started learning BASIC to use it, what enabled me to do some calculations and print things at the screen. For things more advanced than that, I bought magazines and painfully and manually copied the programs from them.
That is how everything started. I have made a post showing how I went from those simple beginnings to the computers we have today. Now AI, another dream of mine when I was young, is also a reality. I wonder where the future will bring us. I wish we humans are responsible with the tools we are creating. There’s no denying it, the future is already here.