Editor James reflects on what being on the computer used to mean
Do you remember your first experience on the computer? I don’t, but I remember being excited by it. All sorts of possibilities lived inside the gray box that first lived in my dad’s office before ending up on my tweenage desktop. See, I grew up when the internet was a well-populated place – websites for every single business, brand, or blogger that you could visit and maybe sign the guest book of.
An example: Because internet speeds weren’t what they are now, I used to play a lot of CD-ROM games to pass the time. I specifically recall logging many hours in. Who was a more queer figure in the young mind than Ms. Frizzle? A childless older woman with a lizard and kooky fashion choices, she resembles almost every lesbian role model I’d later find in adulthood.
Lately, I’ve been missing the fun that came from noodling around with the Magic School Bus crew sans Wi-Fi connection. Now, the internet acts as a shopping mall where you’re either selling or being sold to rather than the hobby hub I remember from my youth. That’s not to say there’s no places to have classic internet fun anymore, but they’re harder to find – which seems sort of bad when you consider that actual kids don’t have anywhere to be treated like children, not consumers.
So what do we do with computer, now? I really dunno. But maybe a little nostalgia-driven action wouldn’t go unappreciated. Get yourself a copy of an older CD-ROM game or even an image editor and try experimenting with it using your adult creative brain. Find the weird queer roots therein, disengaged from capitalist aims other than the integral human urge to have a really good time. Maybe if we remember what came before, we can imagine a better online future.
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