Educational Toys Of The Eighties
During the early eighties, computers were billed as something like educational toys. Some kids desired them, but only a few parents fully understood the point. The world, see, had not yet undergone the personal computing revolution then.
Computer systems had not taken over businesses, becoming an essential tool of everyday business; there were still whole divisions of expert typists who did practically nothing all day but create paperwork for other departments. Had a bill? Someone typed it up. Have to send a letter? Someone typed it up.
And so getting a computer back then was like getting educational toys for Christmas – or so many unsuspecting parents thought. They may have read something about the coming computer revolution and vaguely comprehended that such electronics are going to be somehow essential to the world in a few years, however it’s doubtful the common buyer thought much about it. No, it was the kids who clammored – and how educational could the thing be if kids were voluntarily, even passionately, asking for it?
Asking, demanding – rarely the behavior of children in relation to many educational toys! And certainly, for many kids, the personal computer became nothing more than a glorified videogaming machine, a home arcade.
To be sure, a much wider range of entertainment software was obtainable for computer platforms than on the game consoles of the era, a distinction which persists, though less greatly, today. But make no mistake: the ultimate use the majority of kids got out of a home computer system at the time was electronic entertainment.
Fortunately for a few, however, having a computer within the home – it was generally shared between siblings – lead to occupations in information technology. For these individuals, the early fascination with computers has endured, maturing into jobs creating software, installing hardware, supervising networks. For their parents, a computer was truly the investment in their children initially envisioned.