computers

Post Reply New Topic

I started out on DOS when I was 2 and always had a computer of my own. I'm not really sure if this ret*d my social development as I usually engaged in social activities at school and sometimes outside of the school, but it's possible. At sometime around middle school, I seemed to be much more isolated than before and this may have been due to computers, or it may have been due to something like lagging language skills/abilities or maybe being highly self-conscious. Or it could've been the fact that the nearest friend lived 5 miles away...

I think we've had a computer since at least the age of 7. I mostly played quake games with my siblings, the sims, sim city, and then neopets when my sister found out about it from a friend. She thought it was called geckopets and had to fiddle with google to find the correct website. Also I remember using an irc thing to talk to my grandpa. Also mokitown. Also funny that we only had dial up for a month before we switched to a faster connection because my parents hated slow internet. We're all very computer oriented.

My family had home computers fairly early but I never touched them we later got a mac and it didn't realy speak to me, but once we got a PC things changed around the exact same time my social world was falling apart so I retreated into it. You are looking at it from the wrong way. We lack social skills and have other issues then we finally meet something that doesn't judge us based on how we look, how we act, or how bad at certain things we are. The words of the famous hacker manifesto put it far better then I can.

\/\The Conscience of a Hacker/\/
by
+++The Mentor+++

Written on January 8, 1986
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

Another one got caught today, it's all over the papers. "Teenager Arrested in Computer Crime Scandal", "Hacker Arrested after Bank Tampering"...

Damn kids. They're all alike.

But did you, in your three-piece psychology and 1950's technobrain, ever take a look behind the eyes of the hacker? Did you ever wonder what made him tick, what forces shaped him, what may have molded him?

I am a hacker, enter my world...

Mine is a world that begins with school... I'm smarter than most of the other kids, this crap they teach us bores me...

Damn underachiever. They're all alike.

I'm in junior high or high school. I've listened to teachers explain for the fifteenth time how to reduce a fraction. I understand it. "No, Ms. Smith, I didn't show my work. I did it in my head..."

Damn kid. Probably copied it. They're all alike.

I made a discovery today. I found a computer. Wait a second, this is cool. It does what I want it to. If it makes a mistake, it's because I screwed it up. Not because it doesn't like me...
Or feels threatened by me...
Or thinks I'm a smart ass...
Or doesn't like teaching and shouldn't be here...

Damn kid. All he does is play games. They're all alike.

And then it happened... a door opened to a world... rushing through the phone line like heroin through an addict's veins, an electronic pulse is sent out, a refuge from the day-to-day incompetencies is sought... a board is found. "This is it... this is where I belong..."

I know everyone here... even if I've never met them, never talked to them, may never hear from them again... I know you all...

Damn kid. Tying up the phone line again. They're all alike...

You bet your ass we're all alike... we've been spoon-fed baby food at school when we hungered for steak... the bits of meat that you did let slip through were pre-chewed and tasteless. We've been dominated by sadists, or ignored by the apathetic. The few that had something to teach found us willing pupils, but those few are like drops of water in the desert.

This is our world now... the world of the electron and the switch, the beauty of the baud. We make use of a service already existing without paying for what could be dirt-cheap if it wasn't run by profiteering gluttons, and you call us criminals.
We explore... and you call us criminals.
We seek after knowledge... and you call us criminals.
We exist without skin color, without nationality, without
religious bias... and you call us criminals.
You build atomic bombs, you wage wars, you murder, cheat, and lie to us and try to make us believe it's for our own good, yet we're the criminals.

Yes, I am a criminal. My crime is that of curiosity. My crime is that of judging people by what they say and think, not what they look like. My crime is that of outsmarting you, something that you will never forgive me for.

I am a hacker, and this is my manifesto. You may stop this individual, but you can't stop us all... after all, we're all alike.

double post.

My parents bought our first computer when I was about 10. It was a Commodore 64. We got a 386 IBM clone a little bit later that booted to DOS. I got a job when I was 15 to save up for my own computer. I am now a computer programmer.

I was 45 before I got involved with computers.

I was showing symptoms of Asperger's when I was a toddler.

No serious sensory issues.

I was interested in computers way before I'd even seen one, though I don't remember how that interest started. First computer was a Trash-80 (CoCo) when I was 13. Our family was fairly poor and so I was always slightly behind other kids when it came to tech stuff.

What I loved about computers was, here's a machine I can tell what to do and it will carry it out exactly, without having to guess what the result will be. Unless of course you press a wrong button or enter a wrong code. Compare that to interacting with people, where any button you press may be the wrong one depending on the time and situation, and you never know what that button will do. Entering the wrong information into a computer just gives you the wrong output most times. Giving a human the wrong input data can lead to a BSOD (Bewildering Sociableness Of Death).

So yeah, I was drawn to computers because of the way I am, not the other way round. Same reason I like animals more than people. Both of these things don't judge you, and never pretend to be something they're not. Unless you own a Mac. Then it's all pretending and lies

Fashioned cereal boxes into an imitation computer at 5.
Wrote BASIC programs with pen and paper, with no computer to run them on at 6.
First used a computer at 6.
First had a computer at home at 11 when the school loaned it to me over a holiday period so I could teach the other kids how to program robots in Lego/Logo.
First family-owned computer at 12.