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Welcome To The Twenty-First Century

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My first experience with a computer took place in 1977, when I was in the second grade. I was placed in a gifted and talented jadwal that had Saturday classes at a local high school. A bunch of elementary school kids were piled into a computer lab where we learned how to jadwal in BASIC. At the end of each class we were allowed to play rudimentary video games like Pong. Do you remember Pong? Just a blip on the screen moving back and forth and you and a partner each had control of a longer, more stationary blip that you could move to prevent the floating blip from getting past you for a score, sort of like air hockey on a video screen. Other than Atari video games and arcade games, I don’t think I touched a computer after that till my freshman year of high school.

Mine was the first entering class to be required to take a computer course. This was 1983. The class met in a small lab. It was a one quarter course, and afterwards I never saw the inside of that lab again. Senior year we were required to take typing with Brother Benjamin. Brother Benjamin sat at a desk on a raised platform from which he could observe us. He was ancient then but was still teaching seventeen years later when my brother graduated from the same school. We typed lessons from a book. Brother timed us using the wall clock, and signaled when to start and stop by bringing his hand down upon one of those bells you see on hotel lobby desks. When Brother rang the bell to stop, we had to count our own words and errors and calculate our own scores. We were left to our own recognizance. God was watching, of course. Literally. There was a huge crucifix above the chalkboards in each room.

One classmate of mine, Bryan DiBuccio, always got in trouble with Brother Benjamin. Bryan always tried to type a few extra words after Brother had rung the bell, but as old as Brother was Bryan never succeeded at deceiving him. But still he tried. Eventually it became a game between the two. Brother Benjamin would glower at Bryan from behind his raised desk and say, “Brother knows, Mr. DiBuccio. Brother knows everything!” The only time I ever saw Brother Benjamin get out of his seat during class was to strike Bryan. As usual, after Brother rang the bell, Bryan kept typing. Brother yelled, “Mr. DiBuccio! Stop!” But this time Bryan kept typing. Brother yelled again, louder, but Bryan kept typing and said something foolish like, “You can’t make me stop, Brother.” Well, Brother Benjamin may have been ancient, but he had also been a Gold Gloves boxer in the Navy before entering the Brothers of Holy Cross, and he was not to be messed with. With quickness that defied his age, Brother leapt from his seat and smacked both of Bryan’s cheeks with open palms. We all gasped. Bryan started to laugh and then said something like, “Brother, I didn’t know you still had it in you!” To which Brother Benjamin replied, “Don’t mess with Brother, Mr. DiBuccio. Don’t ever mess with Brother,” and resumed his elevated seat. Our ethics teacher told us that once Brother Benjamin had actually thrown the bell at his head when he was a student, but he had ducked, and the bell went right through the window. Brother forbade anyone to say anything about the incident, and had his dear friend Brother Theodore, the Latin teacher, repair the window over the weekend.

When I went to college I brought a Smith Corona electric typewriter that actually attached to a monitor where I could see what I had written and do my own proofreading on the screen before printing. When I was ready to print, I had to manually feed one page at a time through the carriage of the typewriter. When I began writing for the Daily Campus, they had just purchased Macintosh computers. Mac Plusses: no hard drive for storage, just a slot for a 3.5 inch floppy. These were hooked up to a networked printer, a big LaserWriter IISC. We had no software for layout, however, and so we had to make our columns on the screen and print them out. We’d walk the hard copies downstairs where the editors would cut the columns with exacto knives, run the paper through a waxing machine, and then manually paste them onto full-sized pages taped to the boards. These photoready pages would go out to the Willimantic Chronicle at some ungodly hour to be made into the newspaper.

These days I exist as a full-fledged member of the twenty-first century. I have a two screen monitor for my computer. I run a paperless classroom. The old Blue Whale for the Summer Institute is now on a flash drive. We call it the Blue Minnow. I blog. I can even do a little web design, though I mostly leave that to others. But I couldn’t help but shake my head last week when I read two articles in the New York Times. One reports that Macmillan Publishers is now selling what it calls DynamicBooks, which are basically wiki-texts. A professor or school district can purchase a text that can then be altered using wiki technology to suit the needs of their course and students. There’s been controversy regarding the implications for copyright law, as well as regarding possible scenarios like a district or instructor who might alter a section on evolution to support creationism.

The other item that grabbed me was Tufts University’s decision to accept one-minute long YouTube videos from students applying to Tufts. The videos have become so popular that the admissions office even plans to run a “Tufts Idol” contest that will allow undergraduates to vote on the best applications videos. Brother Benjamin would roll over in his grave if he knew, but I think he’s still teaching.

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