[nonrandomstring]

What I remember of those early computer ads is they showed a smiling family all gathered around a computer, joining in with some wholesome activity.

Firstly, that never happened. The moment my ZX81 came into our house there were nightly fights for the television (early computers needed the telly as a display). The computer completely alienated my parents and siblings who were mainly grateful that my interest in electronics and hacking was a pacifier.

Secondly, the distance between those images of technology as a connecting force and today's reality could hardly be more striking. Personal computers are objects of radical individualism. Four member of the family each staring into their own 6 inch digital world, face lit from below in blueish light would be the right image.

So the question of "how far we've come" is more nuanced than kilobytes of RAM and megahertz of processing power.

[VLM]

> showed a smiling family all gathered around a computer

They were always so dressed up, like they were planning on attending a wedding and at the last minute decided to play Donkey Kong.

The real world looks as it always did, as I sit here "computing" in my gym shorts and a dirty tee shirt from changing the lawnmower oil this morning.

[TedDoesntTalk]

Coincidentally I just watched a 90 second clip from The Brady Bunch. I’d forgotten how formally everyone dressed on TV … even in their own homes with no guests visiting. The father is wearing slacks and a tie. The girls wear dresses. Not realistic.

[rufus_foreman]

Not going to make an argument for the realism of The Brady Bunch, but people did certainly dress more formally in previous decades.

At my first job bagging groceries and stocking shelves, we wore a dress shirt and a tie.

At my first corporate software job, it was only a year or two past the time they had to wear a suit and tie to work. By the end of the 90's people went to work at a corporate job dressed the way I dressed at the beginning of the 90's to go skateboarding.

[TedDoesntTalk]

Yeah, I agree. But I’m talking about at home. Not work.

[ghaff]

Depending on, for lack of a better word, class people did dress up more in general. My father didn't have a tie on at home. But we did dress up way more than today when we went out--and especially if we were traveling by air or going to a restaurant.

In business, I was just joking the other week that, in the course of my career, we've gone from business suits being the expected attire at industry events to jeans with T-shirts at least being perfectly acceptable.

[nonrandomstring]

> were planning on attending a wedding and at the last minute decided to play Donkey Kong.

lol. sweet.

[samatman]

One of my earlier memories was sitting on my Dad's lap playing some Infocom game on his brand-new PC-AT. I didn't get to go into the study that much so it was big deal.

I still have the F series keyboard from that computer, which ended up housing my first three motherboards as well.

[nonrandomstring]

> sitting on my Dad's lap playing some Infocom game

That's heartening. I'm also trying to do a good job as a dad, letting my daughter have positive experiences with computers, to learn to have fun, respect but also command them, to be in control.

[bombcar]

I wish more computer games had “helper” functionality like super Mario galaxy did - perfect to let kids help without having to be able to play the whole game.