Adam Kalsey’s Newly Digital is a great idea, but I’m more than a little put off by the fact that the initial dozen participants (including Kalsey) are all men (never mind that they’re all western men, too; one thing at a time).

Kalsey responsed to a similar criticism on his own entry to the anthology: “[I]t wasn’t a conscious decision on my part to exclude women. I wanted to keep the initial list small so that it would be a bit easier to organize…I realize that I don’t know all the interesting people on the Web and I couldn’t invite them all personally. Instead I opened up an invitation to all the world, so that interesting people would find me.”

I’m a member of a local group comprising several thousand (mostly) Bay Area women who work in all aspects of the web and tech industries. Almost all of them are interesting. And — this will just blow your mind — I even know lots of women who have and/or use computers, in both their business and personal lives, outside of that list. Most of them are pretty interesting, too. Just imagine how many interesting, technologically adept women there are outside my immediate circle!

So, here’s the deal: I’m asking them — you — to write your own stories and ping over there. If you don’t have a blog of your own, you are more than welcome to make use of the generously-sized comments box below to post your story here.

And if you know a woman who she uses a computer, and she’s one of the few I don’t know, be sure send her over.

“Newly Digital is an experimental writing project. I’ve asked 11 people to write about their early experiences with computing technology and post their essays on their weblogs. Some have written about their first computers or learning to program. Others wrote about their first experiences with the Internet or a budding computer technology. Some stories are short and some span several printed pages.”

My own:
Please note that I was small for the earlier part of this history, and it was several decades ago, and I might be remembering it all wrong.

Dad brought home an Apple in 1977. #227 off the line, and I’m sure he took out a second or third mortgage on the house to pay for it. This was just a year after he’d left the Air Force and gone back to graduate school at UC Berkeley (astronomy and physics; he’d done his undergrad at Cal Tech, and looked straight out of Revenge of the Nerds in his yearbook), and he was working at ComputerLand to supplement his student-teaching income, so he probably got a discount.

Anyway. I hated that thing. He had to hook it up to the TV to use it, which significantly impacted my cartoon time. It also needed to be connected to the tape deck to run programs, so I couldn’t work on my radio shows, either. He made me learn basic Basic, and I hated that, too. I just about died of envy when all the other kids in the neighborhood got Ataris for Christmas and were basking in the color glory of Pong while I was stuck with the stupid black-and-white Apple version (note: I swear the Apple version was called ‘Ball’ but I asked my dad and he says it was definitely ‘Breakout’; I have been relating this story of the injustice of my childhood to everyone who will listen for as long as I can remember, and this has ruined everything. Saying “I had to play Ball Breakout when everyone else had Pong” really takes a lot of the punch out of my sad little story.)

(There’s a long stretch here where I don’t remember having anything at all to do with computers. I probably continued playing, and being forced to do more junior programming (note: I don’t think I ever got far beyond ‘go to’ and that wore off pretty quickly, so don’t go thinking I’m a back-end whiz here), but I think I’ve managed to block it all out.)

We used first-gen Macs in the newsroom during my first go at college. I didn’t do anything beyond word processing with those, and managed to crash my computer just as I was completing a story, when I hadn’t saved, at least once a month. I’m much better about that now.

When I went back to college in the early ‘90s, I didn’t use the computers much there, either, mainly because I didn’t have one at home and I wasn’t much on hanging out on campus, let alone in the lab; it was just easier for my to peck it out on the typewriter at home, especially since I’m a bit of a procrastinator and was usually doing essays at 3 a.m.

Then, in 1996, my boss at the PR place (where I, with almost zero technical knowledge, had become the default admin because I knew more than anyone else there) gave me an old Classic II he was going to throw out.

(I’m going to continue this later; it’s been a long day, and the boy needs to watch some DS9. Come back, because the rest is about how I fell head over heels.)

— gwen, June 2, 2003 07:03 PM
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I agree there could have been a more diverse group to start with, but I don’t think that is going to stop more diverse people to post links.

There is kate’s and christine’s posts that was linked soon after:

http://kate.noetech.com/archives/2003/06/02/the_first_time_i_used_a_computer_or_the_first_time_i_ignored_authority.html

http://www.bigpinkcookie.com/archives/005224.html

And then it looks like I’m the only non westerner on the list so far:

http://www.onclipevent.com/archives/enterframe/000086.html

Cheers

PS: I think the Apple game was called breakout, I will try and verify that if I can…

— Nav, June 3, 2003 01:44 AM)

Newly Digital is a personal project. It wasn’t designed to cater to whatever idea of fairness or equity you might have. Everyone has an equal chance to participate, but that’s not good enough for some people.
— Kalsey Consulting Group :: Measure Twice, June 3, 2003 11:24 AM)

My first computer was a Commadore 64 (the kind that plugged into the TV set).

I learned BASIC very quickly and fell totally in love with computers.

— Aynne, June 4, 2003 06:18 PM)