I’ve started packing for the move to NYC – it’s a slow process, mostly because I keep finding things I want to read, or look at or play with rather than put into a box.
Yesterday, while sorting through some bookshelves (there are a lot of bookshelves in my house) I found a copy of the Sungshin Mirror from 1995.
The Mirror is the magazine of the Sungshin Women’s University in Seoul, South Korea and in their Spring issue in 1995, they ran an article by a visiting Australian computer consultant.
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The 90s were a bad hair decade for me.
At the time, I was in Seoul working on a project to install computer systems for the Yonhap News Agency.
Computers were still very new to most people in 1995. Windows was about to burst into the home PC market – but in the Spring of that year, most people didn’t have a PC at work, far less at home. One of the people I met in Seoul was linked to the university – and asked me to right a piece on this new technology for their magazine.
My essay – How to Survive Your First Meeting With a Computer – was aimed at people who had yet to take that first tentative step into cyberspace. It was supposed to be reassuring. It was supposed to tempt people into giving the technology a go. I said…
‘Don’t be afraid of that mysterious box on your desk.’
Still good advice, I think.
‘It’s not smarter than you are.’
I’m not sure I was right about that one.
‘It’s not at all frightening – it’s fun.’
I was right about that one – most definitely – and I think maybe the people who edited the mirror back then might agree. The Sungshin university now has its school song available to listen to on the web.
Things really have progressed since 1995 – and now I only have bad hair days – rather than whole years.