## 07 Generation Home Computer

I'm a child of the 80s and 90s, born in the 70s. I had the chance to see the computer come into the home. But now that most people have a computer in their pocket without even knowing it, I wonder how different our point of view is.

I remember the first consoles, of course, like the ColecoVision. But I was more fascinated by the small computers like the Oric, the TO7 and all that generation of home computers that came just before the now classics: Commodore 64, Amstrad CPC, Atari ST... I saw games, of course, but also the first attempts to draw and paint on a screen, to make sounds. I learned the basics of programming, at school with the Logo and by myself, but I've never been good at it. I've only been good at understanding how it works, not at writing code. Maybe I'm too lazy to spend hours writing code, not writing an algorithm. 

When I had my first computer at home, an Amstrad CPC6128, I wrote...copied programs to make games or tools. It was fun, but there was always a bug in what I was writing. I also had a tool called Discology to "crack" or copy games. I also used it to see if I could change some information, find some cheats in the software. I learned how to write some simple programs by myself, to invent programs for my programmable calculator, and then some C++ programs. Now I'm just able to understand some Visual Basic programs (what a piece of ...!) or other languages not far from C. And it's enough for me to know how to deal with computers on Windows, Linux or OSX.

But having a computer at home was expensive for a middle-class family. An Amstrad CPC with a screen cost the equivalent of about €1,200 today. It was one of the cheapest computers in 1987. If you wanted a PC-compatible one, like Amstrad's first PC1512, it was at least €1800 without a hard drive. When I had my first PC in 1995, it was not far from €2300. But prices have come down a lot since then, and I had my first laptop for around €1000... it's €1500 now. Now you can find a cheap laptop for 800 euros. If you compare it with the average wage, it's less than a month's salary... But now everyone in the family wants a smartphone, whereas in the 90s you only had one computer in the house. With an average price of 300 euros, you can see that it's not easy for a family to have a computer and learn how to use it when you're captivated by the screen of the smartphone. For many families, just having a smartphone seems enough... But during the SARS-CoV2 crisis, we saw the problem!

Many people couldn't print some documents because they didn't have a computer with a printer. I've long been used to creating all kinds of documents for associations and for myself, sending them to printers and printing them myself. Without a PC, that's impossible. With my latest smartphone, it's too difficult to connect to my old printer because it's no longer supported by the bloody app on Android! It has never been easier to find information about anything, but fewer people know how to do it. For many people, there's only one tool to search: Google, Siri, ChatGPT. They have no idea how a website is made, how the internet works, how a smartphone works, how a computer works, because... Nobody told them, and they didn't see how it came about like our generation did.

But I'm not saying that Gen Xers like me are better than the rest. Many people of my age are not "computer fans", or even competent with PCs. Some millennials are better with the internet, but I don't think the Z-generation will have the same approach to computing. I have seen very few people able to deal with it, using for example Arduino/Pi solutions without thinking that it needs a strong support to make it live for years. "Technosolutionism" or technological fix seems to be part of this new generation and millenials and even my generation is sometimes naive about it. When you were alone with your computer to solve a problem, it was different than today with all the networks. You had only literature and sometimes a friend or two. And the power of the CPU was so low that you had to find a very good solution. I have always thought that constraint leads to better solutions. I can see that in some very inventive games on small platforms like pico8, Playdate, Arduiboy. It's very good today to learn code and fi
nd talent, I think.

But for that you have to bring the computer back home, and not with a big OS like the last Windows XX. Small platforms were a good idea for that, but who knows if you don't see them next to laptops and other computers in shops and on websites. I understand that if you have the choice of comfort at a low price, that's what you'll choose. But sometimes it's better to learn with less... My generation was forced to do that, for the lucky ones. I'm not a parent who knows how to do that, but in a way I understand why Steve Jobs didn't want his kids to have smartphones or two computers.

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