Computers have been and are now a big part of my life. I read about "logic machines" and advanced calculators just before I began learning the computer language called Fortran ('formula translation'). I used computers in my dissertation in 1968 but I didn't touch any computer. The university computer was accessed by special attendants only and the center was run like my dry cleaners is run. Bring in a deck of punched cards and give them to us. We will pass them through the machine to be read and the directions in them carried out. The results will be printed on large sheets of paper. Come by tomorrow at this time to get the papers and your cards.
After graduate school, I was mostly an assistant professor of education but also a part-time director of the campus office of academic computing. That doesn't mean running payroll. It means calculating and computing for faculty research. At the time, most professors had not heard of computers and saw no application for them in their lives. Nearly all professors use words all the time and once word processing developed, the relevance shot up. Today, emailing, texting and reading research sources and communications is a big part of academic life.
My home computer has gotten slower and slower. It is ok as long as I don't change programs but when I want to open something besides what I am using, I have to wait for longer and longer times. Today, a new laptop arrived and I am using it now.
