The First Truly Educational Toys
In the early eighties, personal computers were billed as something like educational toys. Some kids wanted them, but only a handful of parents fully understood the point. The world, see, had not yet undergone the personal computing revolution then.
Computers had not taken over businesses, becoming an indispensable tool of everyday business; there were still whole sectors of professional typists who did nothing all day but produce paperwork for other departments. Got a bill? Someone typed it up. Have to send a letter? Someone typed it up.
And so getting a computer in those days was like getting educational toys for Christmas – or so many unsuspecting parents thought. They might have read something concerning the coming computer revolution and vaguely understood that such electronics will be somehow crucial to the world in a few years, but it’s doubtful the common buyer thought much about it. No, it was the kids who clammored – and how educational could the thing be if kids were voluntarily, even passionately, asking for it?
Begging, demanding – hardly the behavior of children in relation to many educational toys! And indeed, for many kids, the personal computer became nothing more than a glorified videogaming machine, a home arcade.
To be sure, a much wider selection of entertainment software was available for computer platforms than on the game consoles of the era, a variation which persists, though less greatly, today. But make no mistake: the greatest use the majority of kids got out of a home computer system at the time was electronic entertainment.
Fortunately for a few, however, having a personal computer within the home – it was generally shared between siblings – lead to occupations in information technology. For these individuals, the early fascination with personal computers has endured, maturing into jobs creating software, installing hardware, supervising networks. For their parents, a computer was truly the investment in their children originally envisioned.