By Jessica Pena, Daily Californian
When Carlos Noreña entered UC Berkeley as a freshman in 1988, he, like so many university students, “came armed with a large, boxy Apple Macintosh computer.” As students, the computer is our lifeline, our bread and butter, the indispensable utility belt to our Batman. But, for Noreña, the situation was not the glamorous lifestyle of personal laptops and instantly accessible lolcatz. “I was one of maybe five students on my dorm floor to have my own computer,” he said, “so my room, as a result, was a hub of activity, as my floormates clamored to finish up their term papers, or, more commonly, to play what in those days qualified as awesome video games.” It seems impossible for us now — with projectors in nearly every classroom, multiple computing facilities within reach, and bSpace — to fathom this world in which personal computers were so scarce. Visions of dystopian landscapes emerge. They are barren, barbaric landscapes where people had to walk, check out and — it pains me to say — turn pages in a book to find out what exactly was the Jugurthine War (note: an old war, apparently).
http://www.dailycal.org/2012/11/16/a-look-back-at-uc-berkeleys-computer-evolution/
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