Retro Scan of the Week: “Are Computers Bringing Familes Together, or Tearing Them Apart?”
Monday, November 27th, 2006
This scan is from a May 1984 article in Personal Computing by Craig Zarley titled “The Pleasures and Perils of Computing at Home.” The article’s main angle focuses on the numerous computer advertisements of the day that pictured an excited, wide-eyed family huddled around a computer while collectively enthralled by whatever is happening on the screen. First-time computer buyers got a rude awakening, however, when they took their new machines home and instead found most of the family competing for personal time with the “new family member.”
Anyone who grew up with a sibling and not enough computers to go around can attest to this phenomenon, yet I find it funny that Personal Computing turned it into the cover article of a magazine. This means that either consumer-level personal computers were so new at the time (and they were) that issues like this seemed novel, or else the magazine was really desperate for material. Perhaps the correct answer lies somewhere between both extremes.
Still, I love those old “family” ads, even if they are unrealistic.
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Tomorrow is Thanksgiving in the United States, which means we cook a lot, eat a lot, sleep a lot, feel uncomfortable around somewhat estranged relatives a lot, prepare to spend a lot, officially start Christmas a lot, and generally take it all for granted, despite the title of the holiday. In order to break with American tradition, I thought I’d offer a personal list of things that I think we — vintage computer and video game enthusiasts — should be thankful for. After all, these things let us enjoy our hobbies. Without them, we’d be collecting dirt and not even know what it’s called. Pay attention, my friends, as we start off serious-ish and degrade into something resembling silliness — but it’s all in the name of holiday fun.
Hello, Matt Groves here from 
I had already been collecting computers for at least two years when I saw the machine, and I was always on the lookout for more additions to my collection. I had heard of a little-known machine called the “Lisa” that Apple released somewhere between the Apple III and the Macintosh, but I had never seen or used one. So when I spotted the Lisa in the library that day, it was an epiphany to me — the Apple story was vividly coming together in my brain. Knowing that the Lisa (a Lisa 2, as it turned out) in the school library was obsolete, I feared that the librarians wouldn’t know what to do with it and would throw it away. I had to take action, but I was painfully shy, and I was only about thirteen or fourteen years old. I was afraid to ask them about the computer because I figured they wouldn’t take me seriously. So I convinced my mother (the best mom ever) to drive back to the library after school and ask the librarians if we could buy the Lisa from them. The librarians had to decline the offer, since it had been donated to the library and was property of the county school system. Sadly, I fear that the Lisa in the library probably met a nasty fate not too long after that incident — a victim of short-sighted middle school bureaucracy.
One year ago today, I posted my first entry on Vintage Computing and Gaming. Little did I know at the time that it would be the start of something that would grow much faster and larger than I could have ever expected.
