My Technology Memories, Part I (5-8 years old)

Since I'm almost twenty, two decades old, I kind of feel like filling my March posts full of nostalgia. Don't think the world has changed in the last 15 years? (I can't really count my infancy, you know). At first I think, it hasn't really. And then I think of the internet. Whoa. I grew up with computers and the internet, was one of the first generations to do so.

The first website I ever visited was yahoo, the search engine. I looked for Lion King pictures to print out and colour at my aunt's house in D.C. I lost my first tooth later during that same trip.

I used to love libraries, not only for the books but for the computer labs they had back then, with all those interactive story book games. Little Critter's Trip to the Beach was often, and so was that one about the dog who travels under the sea, across space, etc. Everything you clicked on seemed to do something surprising! The off-brand Pocahontas adventure was somewhat disappointing, but I loved Pocahontas enough to play it once in a while. There were also tons of educational games. Lovely science games where you mix weather in labs or follow out complicated sequences. I destroyed Reader Rabbit - my first Journalism experience. ;)

My dad had a computer too. A big black laptop with a little red dot for a mouse. He brought it home from work and we have a picture of my sister and I playing on it together. There were exactly two programs that were of use to us on it; some panorama viewing tool that got old quickly, and Build a Park. That one started with an almost-voice sound saying, "Build a Park!!". It enchanted everyone including my mom. Maybe a frog said it - I'm pretty sure a frog was involved somehow. All the game entailed was placing things - benches, lamps, shrubs - here and there like a sticker book. A really early version of Roller Coaster Tycoon. ;)

Later, we got a P.C. with Windows 95 on it. We had some game with Bumble Bees on it that wasn't all that fun, and another game, a Snoopy themed one, that was awesome. There were different levels, but we all remember the bowling because when you did poorly, which in my case was nearly always, the game would say, "Bummer Man!" with a kind of hippy-accent. We were thrilled because back then sound bites were few and far between. We'd bowl time and again and giggle every time we failed.

The Windows 95 also had screensavers. One with stars shooting across - one with a maze - one with pipes. They were awesome.

When I got a wee bit older, dad showed me the grown-up games. Minesweeper (awesome). Solitaire (which bored me once I'd seen all the card designs). Pipe Dream (scary btu awesome). For some reason he steered away from the skiing one. I probably would have sucked. I had little to no natural aptitude for video games and such, but my enthusiasm was indomitable.

The best of my dad's games came from a floppy. It was called Battle for Atlantis, and was basically Risk. There was a simple map of islands, four nations represented by colour, and each territory was marked with a colour and a number - the population of that island. The goal was to conquer everything with your colour (blue). The game was long and there wasn't a good way to pause it. I spent many a long afternoon conquering Atlantis.

My best friend Kirsten had a game on her computer that we didn't have. You had to run around with a mouse and try to get cheese while a cat chased you. I loved that game. I made us play it far more often than Kirsten would have liked. Kirsten's family computer had a password back then. Ours didn't at home, and anyway I thought it was something very important, very private. Kirsten told me her father's password as if it was something of upmost secrecy. It thrilled me to have this knowledge, and to not be able to tell anyone. I never did, tell anyone. And I still remember the password, although it's been more than twelve years.

I probably would have tried to buy my own computer games, but actually a large part of my video game mania was satisfied by going across the street to Richard's house and playing Nintendo 64 there. Banjo Kazooie was the favourite, we (Richard) beat it and then we (Richard) kept playing for hours and hours, dreaming about the Ice Key and Sharkfood Island. Mario Kart was also beloved. And, at the very end, just before the move, Zelda, the Ocarina of Time was released.

Windows 98 was possibly the best thing that ever happened to me. The computer room once we moved to St. Louis was upstairs, across from my own bedroom. I missed Kirsten and Richard and Banjo Kazooie terribly, and I put a lot of energy into this new system and it's many wonders.

Encarta Encyclopedia. I devoured it - it was even better than my Children's dictionary, because it was hyperlinked all over! And occasionally you could even find a picture! Or, rarer yet, a sound file! Or, rarest of all, a short, bad quality video. I spent hours reading articles in search for these, until I found an 'advanced search' option that let me look for 'multimedia'. What a word, multimedia! I watched every video on Encarta again and again. Whenever you read about the rainforest or some such, and the word Biodiversity appeared, you had but to click on the word to be taken to a page with a brilliant full screen picture of a poison dart frog in lush foliage, with this great jungle soundtrack, and the words Biodiversity. I wasn't sure what it was, but I understood that it was HIGHLY desirable.

On Encarta there was a nutrition analyzing application, a basic phrases in a few foreign languages application, and a brilliant game, where you wander through a castle answering trivia questions to open doors. There was a mystery in the castle which I never solved, but I learned a lot. (Actually, this might be a lie. I have a vague half formed memory of going back at 14 or so and beating the game. But that might have been wishful thinking).

But soon we got the internet. Right at the beginning, websites addresses were something to be harvested from the real world, from t.v. ads and magazine pages. All the big companies had them. Nintendo.com. I collected these addresses like pogs.

Then I discovered search. Google didn't exist back then. For a long time I used search.com, going onto Yahoo when I had exhausted all results. With dedication, it was possible to do that back then - even with a topic as broad as, say, 'Banjo Kazooie'. I probably looked at every Banjo Kazooie page that existed on the internet at that time. I read walkthroughs, rumours, fanfiction... I remember how sites were laid out back then. Remember guestbooks? If you look up my name Google to this day you see posts from 1998 in BK guestbooks. :) There were few pictures online back then and everytime I was lucky enough to find one, especially, almost unimaginably, an animated GIF, I saved it to my hard drive.

Nickelodeon.com had GAMES to download. This blew me away. I picked one at random - it was called Crying Baby. It was 2-point-something megabites and took a half hour to download. I walked downstairs and felt pretty cool while it was downloading. I ran into my dad and said, "Doesn't it take a long time, downloading?" He got angry with me! He told me I wasn't allowed to download anything, that it was bad. I was pretty scared and I didn't download any more games for a while. He was well intentioned - he didn't want a silly 8 year old downloading viruses onto a new computer. But still, I was confused. Even the pictures I downloaded took a while back then. Was I not allowed to download them? In secret, I continued hoarding images.

Guiltily, I kept Crying Baby. It sucked. This baby cried until you gave him one of his six toys. He would be happy for a few seconds, then destroy the toy and start crying again. Just that. Forever. But it was mine, my game, my illegal and bad game that I wasn't supposed to have. I figured out how to make a hidden folder and I hid Crying Baby there.

... But after a while, the computer still seemed to be running fine. And I thought - if Crying Baby didn't destroy the computer, maybe it's okay to get just one more game from Nickelodeon.com? Slowly, I acquired each and every one of them, in fear and secrecy. I'd sneak on the computer at night to download them, or while my dad was at work, knowing I couldn't let my dad see and praying that mom didn't know any better. Playing the games was fine, I could always close them fast enough to avoid being seen. But the downloads, now, that was risky business.