I now have a column every Sunday at the The Manila-Times and it is NOT about politics. It’s techie stuff at the Sunday Business & IT Updates section.
Welcome to my introductory post at “Let’s Talk #Social” where you will get to read commentaries, reviews, trends, how-to’s, and feature stories about technology and social media that are relevant in our daily lives. I thought it best to introduce myself, a bit of my history in technology, social media, and the internet, just so you know where I am coming from.
Remarks like “You are so techie for your age” amuse me. I have always been an enthusiast when it comes to technology. I am a graduate of BS Food Technology—technically a foodie and techie rolled into one. Though I didn’t pursue a career in Food Technology, I chose a homemaker role for many years before I went into blogging.
Not many know that my food blog is my largest community followed by four other blogs. I believe my curiosity to try anything new and adapting to emerging media and technology brought me to where I am today.
Technology , through the years
Technology fascinated me ever since I got my first calculator when I was 15 years old in the early seventies. I still remember the heavy chunky box with green dotted numbers on the screen. Having the calculator then felt like having your own laptop today. Then Pong arrived in our TV room in 1975. Just like the game consoles of today’s generation, the Pong was attached to the TV. Oh, the novelty of a video game right there at the living room! Parties at home were never a dull moment.
My next encounter with home technology was the TRS—80 microcomputer in 1979. I remember how user data was stored on a cassette tape. The tapes were often so fragile that I’d splice and tape them back together. The first computer language I dabbled with my siblings was BASIC, which we learned through a manual. How delighted we were when we got the computer to say “hello”. I didn’t own the TRS 80 since dad bought it for our home business. He scolded us for using it to play games. He insisted that “the computer is for business.”
“But dad, we need to play first to see how this computer works” we protested.
True, indeed, my brother then developed his own software (I forgot the name) for our bakeshop. He became one of the first teachers on computer programming in Cebu. See, we need to allow our kids a fair amount of play time and sooner or later they can transform play into productive use.
The lone IBM Clone PC XT arrived at my office in 1983. It was quite disappointing to see it often used to play Pac-man, the same Pac-Man running around a maze, eating pac-dots. Being a workaholic during those days, I wanted to work on my dbase, a software which I needed for a project’s survey results. I had a PC XT at home where I introduced simple games to my toddlers. The computer was also useful in teaching my father who suffered from aphasia to recognize words and its pronunciation, through a game.
Continue reading “A Social Mom” at the Manila Times.