Analog Dreams

Liminal Spaces, Issue 2, Volume 2

Our family’s very first computer arrived in 1980-something on Christmas Day. Santa Claus gifted us a nondescript “homebrew” constructed by little elves, containing an 8-bit color graphics card processor and a whopping 512 KB of RAM. The 15-inch CRT monitor sat on top of a large terminal base, the pair a monument to advances in computing. It contained no hard disk drive, but did sport a 5.25-inch floppy disk drive and a 3.5-inch floppy disk drive. Accompanied by its side, a faithful dot matrix printer, the slow and steady workhorse that required an ink ribbon and a lot of patience.

The software we acquired over the years, from where I’m not sure, included titles like The Print Shop, WordPerfect, Paperboy and Test Drive. My dad borrowed a copy of Windows 3.1 from a friend in an attempt to load it. Our trusted computer companion fell short of the memory requirements. While the advancement in graphics barely surpassed our Atari 2600, it managed to capture our hearts and attentions, ushering us into a new age of personal computing. In subsequent years, I would compose letters to grandparents, finish homework assignments and create custom, albeit mostly canned, greeting cards and banners.

I took my first typing class in middle school on a Macintosh 512K computer, a distinguished piece of hardware students were instructed to respect. In between games of Oregon Trail, we learned finger placement and practiced swift and steady strokes without looking down at the keyboard. Our ultimate goal involved typing while wearing blinders so we couldn’t cheat by staring at our fingers. Computers were changing my life in ways I couldn’t imagine, but nothing could prepare me for the Internet revolution, a transformation of our world and social psychology.

Going Online

When my brother brought home an external modem for our PC, I had no idea what it was, and had never heard of the Internet. The web as we know it, was in its infancy, only a year past its inception by Tim Berners-Lee. Modems were mysterious devices, alien technology that could transmit data over phone lines at a whopping speed of 14,400 bits per second, or 0.0288% the speed of a modern 50 Mbps connection. A 1 MB file would take 9 minutes and 16 seconds to download, that magical process of reconstructing little bits into discernible text or images. It didn’t matter because we couldn’t figure out how to get it working.

Insistent our computer could handle it, my brother regaled Dad with imaginative descriptions of a bright future — including the ability to shop online, order groceries and have them delivered. My father humphed in disbelief, as he was apt to do when his kids exhausted him with ridiculousness, which followed with a number of questions picking apart the idea. The modem went unused, eventually finding its way into the memory scrapheap, possibly even the physical garbage bin. The failure had little effect on my well being, since my ignorance shielded me from the possibilities. That changed when a close friend later introduced me to an ISP called America Online (AOL).

AOL, one of the first powerhouse Internet service providers, quickly cornered the market by offering free trial installation CDs. Users could log on and take advantage of the service for several hours before monthly subscriber charges began accruing. Massive adoption rates surpassed what the infrastructure could support at peak times. Hopping online over the weekend often required several hours of waiting in a queue before being allowed to use email, message boards and instant messenger. These were all new to me, windows into a changing social landscape, fortune tellers of a near future when humans would prefer to communicate over keyboards — no longer merely tools to teach typing.

As my friend and I played pool in his basement, we waited diligently for the welcome message indicating we could… chat with girls. What better way for teenage boys to pass the time, to practice our conversational skills without maintaining the conventional, inconvenient eye contact. Or having to deal with the beads of sweat running own our armpits and crossing our brow. We were embarking on a journey, pioneers leading future generations of adolescents into a life of social ineptitude, handicapping their conversational skills. The smart phone would reduce those vocabularies down to abbreviations and emojis.

Advancements continued for years into high school and eventually college, when the computer labs at universities became commonplace, managed by students moonlighting as IT amateurs. Broadband access gained popularity and while studying journalism, my advertising professor recommended I learn HTML. He said the fate of news and advertising would rest in the hands of writers who also had a command of basic web technologies. His amazing foresight led me down a path of self-discovery that changed the entire trajectory of my life. In a few months, I picked up enough skills to become a webmaster for the student run newspaper, an interest that carried into my short lived copywriting career.

While writing advertising copy for an online car brand, I demonstrated a willingness to learn and grow my programming skills. This landed me a job at a web design and development firm, ending my pursuit of writing as a vocation. I met my wife there during the dot-com boom, which pulled us into a field that has provided well, although with a small degree of turmoil. When the bubble burst, a number of transients leaped back into previous fields of study, assured that technology companies could not sustain the profits previously thought possible. That ship has rocked back and forth since the early 2000s, never quite sinking or offering steady passage.

Nearly 25 years later, my continued exposure to computers and the Internet has brought both happiness and success, as well as some sadness. Human trafficking, bullying, exploitation and drug use proliferates because web technologies provide secure and anonymous access and communication. The scales, when measured, tip toward a growing discontentment in opposition to a wealth of benefits. In recent years, with the rise of social media and video platforms, all of this invites me to venture down another path of self-discovery. It’s a divergence, a growing dissatisfaction prompting me to disconnect entirely from the digital realm.

An Artificial Lens

The wonder and excitement surrounding computers and the web has reached its zenith with the proliferation of smart phones, the rise of AI and the present social media malaise infecting society. I fear it has reached a dangerous peak, where spacial computing devices like the Apple Vision Pro are a beacon of dystopian ideals. Apple’s marketing says things like “…seamlessly blends digital content with your physical space.”, “…do the things you love in ways never before possible.”, and “Be in the moment. All over again.” These snippets indicate we’ve moved toward computing as casual convenience, taking for granted the big problems it could solve. The liberty of connecting across borders is evolving into a global displacement, with individuals feeding off perceptions of reality as opposed to the reality just beyond the artificial lens.

Much can be said about why this is happening. As a member of Generation X, I’m among the last to grow up without the web, tender years spent developing independence and creativity through physical social interaction. It’s a trait of many Generation X adults, who were born between the 1960s and early 1980s, and that burgeoning technological innovations and consumer electronics encouraged starting in the late 1970s. Our hungry imaginations and exposure to new possibilities demanded a style of play previously impossible, mixing untethered creativity and ingenuity. It fostered a generation who successfully bridged the gap between analog play and digital play. Many of us now feel lost in the middle.

While putting my son to bed one evening, I shared with him what it was like for me growing up as a child of the 80s. For all of the efforts he puts into mastering Fortnite, there is a deeper yearning to connect with his friends face-to-face. My daughter is the same, preferring interactions in person that promote human engagement instead of feeling trapped inside a screen. The notion of gathering a group of peers together for pickup games of basketball and hanging out at the mall, maturing through independence, or the unthinkable simple rule of be home before dark, are all very appealing. It’s possible my grandkids will find their way back to this freedom in response to my influence.

The older I get, the more I embrace the analog. Even though computers and the Internet have shaped me considerably, positively in many respects, there’s an inventive spirit yearning to create and enjoy life without its influence. I seriously consider a period in the not-too-distant future when I log off completely. It seems fanciful, sometimes foolish. What if I didn’t email, text, watch streaming services or game online? What if every facet of my online persona were to fade away into nothingness, captured only in the archives of an out-of-date cloud server? What could my life become if I were to lean into that self before I flipped on the power switch of our first PC, or logged onto AOL? Would I be a better person for it, a healthier person, a more socially conscious person, a more faithful person?

One day I’ll find out the answers to those questions. But you won’t. Because I won’t be online to tell you.