I count my years in computing from 1986, when I bought a Mac Plus, but I actually bought my first computer several years before.
It was a Commodore VIC-20. It plugged into a television set and had no software, indeed no way to even load or store software. The floppy disk hadn't been invented yet.
After hooking it up, I spent an afternoon writing a simple BASIC program to control a little stick man. He walked across the TV screen and did jumping jacks. When I turned it off, all my work disappeared.
Big deal, I thought. I never played with it again.
I failed my first test as a computer geek, because I had no interest in computers as just computers. I got no thrill from controlling photons jumping around a TV screen. I wanted a computer to do something useful.
My first real computer was a word processor and desktop publisher. It did something useful.
Low prices, high competition
Anyone who has shopped for a computer lately probably has noticed that prices are low and competition cutthroat. Analysts who track such things say that the PC business is flat.
The reason is simple: Most people who need a home computer have one (or two or three). Everyone else - actually a majority - feel they don't need one.
The Internet is changing all that of course. You'd have to live on Mars to avoid the incessant hype and ubiquitous ''http://...'' (How's this for overkill: the Snickers candy bar web site, http://www.snickers.com).
This hype leaves a lot of people who don't have computers wondering if they need one. Even my 71-year-old father, who's baffled by his word processing typewriter, asked me recently about sending e-mail to his grandkids.
But the truth is that computers still are too much like the old VIC-20 and not enough like appliances - simple, reliable machines that do their jobs.
If my father bought a computer today, he would spend what for many people is a month's salary on an overly complex machine that he would struggle for weeks or months to master. To hook up to the Internet he would have to install and configure Netscape and Winsock and learn about domain names and IP addresses. He would worry about computer viruses and power surges and wonder why his computer keeps losing the connection to the Internet.
What all this is leading to is the idea of the Network Computer, or Internet appliance. Imagine a computer with no hard drive or floppies or viruses or software or operating system - a computer that gets everything it needs from the Internet, the way your TV gets everything from cable.
Today's hottest debate
The network computer is the hottest debate in computer circles today. On one side are the traditionalists who defend the expensive, do-everything computer; on the other side are the futurists who see homes with dozens of simple single-purpose computers, including one permanently hooked to the Internet.
Oracle, the high-end database company, surprised everyone early this year by saying it was building a $500 network computer. Oracle CEO Larry Ellison, announcing the new computer, likened the PC to the steam engine at the beginning of the industrial age. Steam, of course, went the way of the dodo.
Oracle is not the only company developing network computers. Seven companies have prototypes including Apple and Sun Microsystems.
The gizmos seem to take two directions: super telephones with keyboards and laptop-style monitors, or super Nintendo-style game machines that plug into the TV. The two designs are driven by the two current Internet paradigms: low-speed phone links or high-speed cable hookups.
What makes the network computer attractive to retailers is the price. A computer that costs a week's salary would open up new markets for PCs.
Is this the future of computing? Perhaps, but the idea of a network computer soaking up tons of software and games from the ether is years away, because of the condition of the Internet.
We call it a superhighway, but it's really just a two-lane country road with a speed limit of 28.8 and traffic jams to rival Interstate 71 construction zones.
E-mail Charles Brewer with questions, comments and suggestions at cbrewer@enquirer.com.