1983 — The Year We Made Contact

The beginning of my journey with computers came long before any notion of “having a profession.” Before I even knew what a profession was. We’re talking about somewhere around 1983 or 1984. I was about 11 years old and living in France with my mother and brother. It was there that the first contact took place — and I use that word with all the sci-fi weight it deserves.

My mother was doing her PhD at the University of Paris, and a friend of hers, Robert, worked in a computing lab at the same university. Sometimes, when she needed a few hours of peace (a rare commodity for anyone with two pre-teens at home), she’d ask Robert to look after us for a while.

The “babysitting” took place in the computing lab where he worked. He kept his musical instruments there (a flute, a keyboard), and while he played his music, he let my brother and I play a game on one of the computers.

The computer must have been pretty advanced for its time — it even had a magnetic induction mouse that worked on a flat base. And the only thing we knew how to do with that computer was play a little asteroids game.

The spaceship was a triangle. The screen, infinite space. And there we were, two kids spinning the mouse, trying to destroy little chunks of digital rock before they hit the ship. When we hit an asteroid, it split into two smaller ones. And off we went again, protecting the ship.

That was my first contact with a computer: a simple little game that was enough to keep us busy for hours. Looking back, it was maybe a missed opportunity to learn more about computing. Access was rare, almost a privilege, but at the time I had no sense of how important it was, nor any idea about what computers are and can do. It was just a way to spend some time and leave the grown-ups in peace.

Around the same time, my mother got our first video game as a gift from a Brazilian colleague. A console that only had one game: Pong. Two white dashes on the sides of the screen, a square “ball” in the middle, and two brothers determined to prove who was best. The controller was a little wheel: you turned it one way to move the paddle up and the other way to move it down. The goal was not to let the ball escape past your side of the screen.

We spent hours on it. And, like any siblings, we also fought a lot. There was always a poke or someone standing in front of the TV.

NOTES:

• Robert told me recently that the lab computer I mention above was probably a PERQ.