on 10/11/02 1:04 PM, Fred Cisin (XenoSoft) at cisin_at_xenosoft.com wrote:
> For our Computer Faire booth, we used to have a 5' inflatable toy
> Tyrannosaurus (wearing a valid admission badge as VP of Marketing) holding
> an 8" diskette with a bite out of it. One time, a little kid walked up
> and said, "that's not real." My assistant said, "that's right, it's just
> a plastic inflatable." The kid responded, "not that, you dork, that disk
> is fake." Bob said, "No, that's a real diskette; they used to make them
> like that." The kid rolled his eyes and said, "yeah. right." and walked
> away.
I've had a few experiences like that. But my little brother is 8 years old,
and he knows what an 8" floppy is. I even had him using them on a TRS-80
Model II once. He's quite familiar with what most of the things in my
collection are, and can tell the difference between the PDP-11/34 and the
PDP-11/23. And he was smart enough to know that the two very large things on
the floor that kept him from getting to his iMac for several months were
disk drives. RK05j's to be exact. I recently promised to teach him Pascal. I
recently promised to teach my father how to turn a computer on. :-)
I've always thought that computer literacy classes in schools should teach
computer history.
--
Owen Robertson
Received on Fri Oct 11 2002 - 14:28:31 BST