In 1984 my father bought me the Spectrum of 48K making a titanic effort for the family budget of the time. I think I finished BUP 1 and that summer was the beginning of a world of possibilities in the digital world that I think has not stopped yet. Because if we are now living the Internet and the strength of social networks with mobile devices, in the 80s we had the Spectrum.
The Spectrum is now 30 years old, as indicated in Xataka, although they bought it for me a little later. This flirtatious black machine allowed the chiquillería of the time to access programming in Basic language, to share experiences and cassettes, to the dissemination magazines in which you could read references to games, tricks and information of the programs that were running in the machine. We learned a new language: microprocessors, input-output, memory, peripherals, motherboards and yes, we type the load "hundreds of times and we waited, hearing the cassette beeps, to load the games and we could use them.
I think we haven't changed much. Those who were more daring in the use of those machines, although I never learned to program seriously, we continued to share experiences, disseminate content, reviewing how to learn to program and experimenting because we know it is difficult to break something. You can still hear older people saying that of: Don't touch to see if you are going to break it!. At home I tell my daughter, touch, touch. Do not worry that nothing happens. And if it happens then it will be fixed.
The Spectrum taught us to experiment, to try, to touch, to take care of the machines and to include them in the lives of families. Although the number of games was limited and the connections between the computers and therefore between the users of the machines were not as frequent or abundant as now, however we discovered that this had many possibilities. Immediately the clonic computers arrived and then yes it began to change and especially with the arrival of the Internet we live the revolution in which we are immersed.
The keys were rubber, the Spectrum did not sound too good, each key admitted up to five functions I think I remember, we learned to type, we played the piano, we played 100 meters with Daley Thompson and his Decathlon. In the cinema we discovered, in the War Games movie, that those machines could also be connected to others, and we grew while our parents, with exceptions, did not venture to use it.
Now we think that parents have to get closer to the machines that our children play, and we don't realize that we always do the same thing all generations? In a few years our children will talk about consoles, mobile applications, tablets ... How about we start sharing experiences with them?
In Xataka | Load "Happy Birthday Spectrum"
