The First Digital Native

How technology changed everything, three times and counting.

In the early 1990s, Neil Postman released a book called Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology. I devoured it twice—once in college and again in grad school. I loved how it marched through history, examining advances in tools, industry, science, and technology that reshaped our culture. I was challenged by his claim that we are all too often blind to the price we pay to use the tools we employ. I'll admit at the outset that this book shaped me on this subject, or at least gave me a framework for critiquing my own use of any technology.

When I say "any technology," I really do mean any. I’ve mused, while using my beard trimmer, about how that humble tool plays a role in shaping my sense of self. I recently bought a cute little espresso machine, which, despite its bargain price, came with a guide of some 27 steps for crafting the perfect shot of the black gold. I follow it with far more dedication than I’ve shown to social clubs or community associations I’m purportedly committed to. And let’s not forget Amazon. Every time I place an order, I’m not just bemused; I’m almost disturbed by how quickly the package arrives. It’s like the bizarro Bezos supply chain has cracked the code, somehow manufacturing three pewter Millennium Falcon bottle opener keychains in my neighbor’s basement just to ensure they arrive before I even remember to order shampoo. Naturally, that shampoo was manufactured in my other neighbor’s spare bedroom, as it shows up in the same box.

After my customary meandering, but hopefully amusing, prelude, I’m here going to talk about my experience with technology. But maybe it’s best to start with a quote from Postman to frame my overall intent, and to begin with the end in mind...

“One characteristic of those who live in a Technopoly is that they are largely unaware of both the origins and the effects of their technologies.”

— Neil Postman, Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology

In this piece, I aim to gain personal awareness of the origin and effects of my technologies—nod to Neil. In other words, I intend to reflect on the scope of my own technology experience. I’m doing this in part because I’ve got some musings in draft form about technology that will be coming in the months ahead. These thoughts will neither be a flirty cheerleading for emerging technologies nor a Luddite’s grim prediction of apocalypse. I hope they’ll fall somewhere in the middle: a sort of intentional appreciation mixed with a conscious evaluation of how technology affects us.

That said, I don’t claim to be necessarily "right" in my analysis. Most technology predictions seem naive after just a few decades, if not a few years. And I’m certainly not a Socratic sage of the computer sciences. I should confess: barba non facit philosophum—a beard does not, in fact, make one a philosopher (see above, re: beard-trimmer).

Instead, my goal is to be honest, examining my own experience with technology over the past five decades, for my own self-awareness. Perhaps by reading along, you will sharpen your own sense of Postman’s urging: to become more intentional in assessing the origins and effects of your own technology use. To kick off, I need to start at my technological nascency—the cradle of Drury technology. This being Act 1, we begin where one had to in the late 1970s: with a trip to Radio Shack with Dad.

Act 1 - Access to Computers

My father, Keith Drury, was an early adopter of computer technology. Back in that day, the only place you’d find a computer was in a massive corporate office, where the computing machines were the size of filing cabinets, and everyone used them while standing, as if they were industrial equipment—which they sort of were. But my dad wanted one for himself.

As the 70s gave way to the 80s, we went to Radio Shack. This was a place you’d be more likely go to buy a television antenna or Ham Radio equipment. But they had begun selling a few computers, so my dad jumped on it. The computer was the TRS-80, and Dad bought one of the first. TRS stood for Tandy Radio Shack, and only 250,000 were made. There’s actually one on display at the Smithsonian. I remember it having a very industrial feel, like turning on equipment in a machine shop. There was an incredibly loud fan that spun the whole time you used it.

Dad paid $5,200 for that computer, which would be the equivalent of more than $20,000 today. Imagine someone in your house today announcing they spent $20,000 on a computer! For that price, you could buy a new Hyundai Venue, Nissan Versa, or Kia Forte. Granted, these are some of the cheaper cars today, but in those day, you could have purchased a Chevette, Bobcat, or Pinto for under $4,000. So, in a very real sense, my dad bought a computer that cost more than an actual car.

For a massive extra charge he maxed out the memory to 16 KB. If you don’t know what that means, it was a lot back then, but now it’s laughable. The standard Apple iWatch of today has 32 GB of memory. That means a computer on someone’s wrist today has 2.8 million times more memory than our computer which cost more than a car. (To be fair, Apollo 11 landed on the moon with just 4 KB of memory in 1969.)

Ya Basic

My dad taught himself Basic, a computer programming language. So, yeah, the branding was pretty basic back then, but Radio Shack’s advertisement for the computer promised, "Obviously, a computer is much more than just a 'number-cruncher.' It is literally an extension of the mind. It is to man’s mind what the lever is to his arm – a machine capable of increasing his effectiveness." I got to experience this promise firsthand. The first thing my dad did was write a math quiz program for me because I was behind in math at school. Every day, I had to "beat" the program in several math challenges before I could play or watch cartoons. Because of this, the very first time I ever did homework was with the aid of a computer. Not many people born in the early 70s can say that. I’ve wondered if I could be one of the oldest humans alive to have truly been a "digital native."

I also started using the computer on weekends for fun when I discovered you could play some very rudimentary games on it. So between my math quizzing and games on the weekend, I’ve been a daily computer user since 1980. I should probably write up my entire history with early computer games, but for now, let me just mention that the first major game I got obsessed with was Zork, an entirely text-based early adventure game created by geniuses at MIT to test out their computers. Since very few reading this would know of what I speak, I'll describe it here:

When you booted Zork up the screen would say something like, "You are standing in a clearing west of a decrepit house with a boarded front door. You see there is a mailbox here." If you then typed "Open mailbox" into the prompt it would say, "Opening the mailbox reveals a small leaflet." You would then also have to type "read leaflet" which would then read off the message to you and you were off on an adventure by saying “walk north” or just “n” for a short command. It may sound boring, but once I had my own children I found an modern emulator for Zork, then screen-cast it onto our TV in the living room, and had my kids "play" it by giving me commands. It was fascinating to see them so engrossed just as I had been decades before, using their minds to imagine the scenes—like reading a book. At one point, a scary ogre with an axe appeared and was described in vivid text. My kids were actually quite terrified, wanting to stop the text-based game because it was too intense.

Computers became a significant hobby for my early adopter dad, so I grew up as a digital native in the 1980s, when most people thought of computers as belonging in science fiction movies like Tron, Blade Runner, and Back to the Future. From that point on, we always had new computers at home. We got an IBM 5150 in 1982, and in 1985, we got our first "portable computer" (a laptop was a later idea, since this thing was too heavy to actually sit on your lap). The Compaq Portable could be carried like a suitcase, and if you "parked" the drive, you could technically make it portable. We had several XP machines—the 286, 386, and 486—and even an early Zenith laptop. Then we got the glorious Gateway "tower" with a color screen that came in the most stylish "cow print" boxes (I believe Gateway, not Apple, was the first to figure out that a beautiful unboxing was a true aesthetic advantage).

Computers changed how I learned math and how I wrote papers in high school and beyond. By the time I went off to university in 1992, I not only had a computer in my dorm but it was an early laptop. This was during an era when most students hand wrote their papers, or typed them in the computer lab. The singular computer lab at my college in the early 90s was located in the science building and had maybe 10-20 computers for about 1,500 students. It sat mostly empty. You didn’t even have to reserve a computer—it seemed one was always available.

The troglodytes in my dorm clutched at their Bic pens with their paws, forced to scrawl humanities term papers on college-ruled spiral notebooks. I, however, was living my best First Digital Native life. I’d type up my papers on my wonderful computer and print them on my hefty late-80s dot matrix printer, which screeched like a chimpanzee trying to play the violin. I’d turn in those papers with pride!

And that’s Act 1 of my technology history. Access to computers came early for me as one of the First Digital Natives. Perhaps one might even say I love technology. I believed, even back in the 80s and early 90s, that computers were going to change everything.

But then, access to computers gave way to access to the internet—and everything that changed was going to change all over again.

Of course that’s Act 2. Stay tuned.

So, what’s your origin story with computers? What’s the first computer you ever used? When did you start using computers regularly?