A List Of Things Thrown Five Minutes Ago

HOW BAD WAS THAT MOVIE? PINOCCHIO BAD: In response to my question about first computers, one loyal reader writes:

It was Xmas of 1982, I think. I was 9. And under the tree…The TI 99 4A, thanks to my father (who, incidentally, has maintained to this day his tendency to embrace whatever version of the Latest Technology eventually loses the battle for market share. The Commodore 64 came out later that year, whereas TI was months away from giving up the computer business altogether. We were a WordPerfect household too).

Ah, the TI 99 4A. What a machine. A blazingly fast 3 MHz processor. 16K of RAM. “High resolution video”, by which I mean that it used the TV as a monitor. Tape cartridge drive. And best of all, it was pitched by Bill Cosby in full besweatered glory.

As I recall, the idea was that my brother and I would grow up conversant with computers, speaking BASIC like our native tongue, and take our place in the New World Order. I dutifully banged out a few BASIC programs of stupefying simplicity and uselessness, but could never manage to find them on the tape after saving them, which sort of took the fun out of the whole thing.

This is where the embarrassment reaches its peak. The final blow to my father’s dreams of a computer-literate daughter occurred with the 1983 release of “Superman III.” This movie—which was lamer than lame, which actually featured synthetic Kryptonite laced with cigarette tar as the big gimmick--had a scene in which the evil supercomputer sucked in the villainess and turned her into a robot. This image haunted me for, literally, years, and I refused to touch the damn TI for a month lest it, um, turn me into a robot. Yeah. Scarred for life by a movie starring Richard Pryor.

On a happier note, my younger brother maintained a sublime indifference to All Things Computer until he was 12, when the acquisition of a Sega Genesis game system sparked some kind of buried interest. He’s now a grad student at MIT, and he seems to be writing a lot of programs. I’m not really sure what they’re about, since I glaze over 30 seconds into any attempt to ask. I’m not sure what the moral of the story is. Maybe it’s that, when attempting to mold your child, you should try to avoid linking promising career paths to images of devouring enslavement. At least, not explicitly.