Do you have a nagging feeling that computers are no longer being used for you, but against you? Me too. Big tech (Meta, Google, X) track our every movement online and use that information to manipulate our emotions. Information designed to keep us scrolling, reacting, and watching ads. And the second we click “I agree” when we first use Windows or macOS, we give up the right to decompile or reverse-engineer the software that runs our own computer.
My Dad was an early employee of CompuServe, and so I was exposed to “dialing in” to mainframe computers (in this case DEC PDP-10s) from a young age. My first personal computer was an Ohio Scientific Instruments Challenger IIP attached to a 9 inch CCTV monitor popular at the time. I learned BASIC on that computer, and that computers could be tinkered with. Our family then progressed to a VIC-20, where I learned that computers could be playful and fun. After that, it was a Commodore 64, where I learned machine language and discovered I could write programs that weren’t just simple games. In my junior year of high school, I wrote BBS software and connected it to our second phone line, installed so my Dad could log into work computers. That’s where I learned that computers could be social. Finally, I graduated to an Amiga 1000, where I learned that computers could become powerful instruments of expression. I learned C and wrote a simple ray tracer program and played around with graphics with Deluxe Paint and more.
Computers today are incredibly powerful, and there is so much more we can accomplish with the computers of today than the personal computers of my youth. But much of computing today is like the computing of the 1970’s: the modern equivalent of dialing in to a powerful mainframe computer. Useful and impressive — but ultimately not ours. Our web interfaces are just powerful terminals into computers we don’t own or control. And the computers we use are so complex that it is nearly impossible for one person to understand the whole system.
Our computers and our computing is no longer personal.
The original People’s Computer Company published its first newsletter in 1972, stating:
“Computers are mostly used against people instead of for people; used to control people instead of to free them; Time to change all that – we need a… Peoples Computer Company.”
People’s Computer Company, October 1972
Computers are powerful tools, and even over 50 years ago, they saw how that power tends to be used once control drifts away from individuals. Their philosophy helped spark the personal computer revolution and the open source movement. Their push to build a free BASIC interpreter, and the Dr. Dobb’s programming magazine that followed that, inspired many young people into computer science.
This isn’t nostalgia. It’s about understanding where personal computing came from. It’s about learning how early pioneers like Bill Gates, Steve Wozniak, Niklaus Wirth, Bill Atkinson and many others did what they did and the philosophies that drove them. So we can not only learn from the past, but begin to regain control and agency. To create something that is our own — and in the process experience the joy of learning, building, creating, and using the powerful tools of truly personal computing.
If this resonates with you, I’m glad you’re here. I’m Eric.
Let’s begin.