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There was a brief and remarkable period in history from the mid 90s to the late 2000s where homes all across the land had a room that was referred to as “The Computer Room”
Not “The Office” no; for this room was not so pedestrian. It was a room whose entire function was to house the great monolith of The Computer.
A corner desk in veneered pine-effect plywood, atop which sat the great beige tower and CRT. A printer and a scanner straddling the desk like sentinels. Racks of CD holders built right into the fake pine, and a lidded box for floppy disks in a smoky translucent plastic, that for some reason came with lock and key as if the disks were precious jewels.
These days we have no need for such things, and the home office is once again simply an office. But for a while we had The Computer Room, and some part of me misses you.
This was beautiful. Thank you.
Your description of those desks totally knocked some of my old memories loose. I remember going to a friend’s house in the late 90s when the first smallish “all-in-one” PCs started coming on the market (before the iMac claimed that space in ‘98). They had their new all-in-one PC set up on a tiny desk in the hallway outside their office. It was there so everyone in the family could use it, but I remember being shocked at how small it was, and so impressed that it didn’t need the whole corner of a room.
For sure right!
What really changed though wasn’t the size of the computer, but how the computer produced value.
Initially, a lot of what people wanted computers for was to get their “document stuff” done, and that was what took up all the room, because of the printer, and scanner, and paper, and filing drawers, and so-on. And soooo many CDs for software you needed to get that all done.
Back when I was a kid, my babysitter used our Windows 95 machine to write up and print off a cover letter for job applications, and it was 9 year old me who taught her how to do it, lol. And that was the value.
I bet even when your friend set up their shiny new all-in-one, they still had the old computer and all its attached devices hiding away shamefully in the ‘office’ there somewhere…
So it wasn’t really miniaturisation that killed the computer room as much as it was every aspect of life going online. No physical disks anymore because software comes over the Internet. No need to print because 99% of our life and business can be done online. So all the things that filled up the computer room just ceased to be needed, and so did the room that held them.
My parents’ house never had and still doesn’t have Internet. I was the one with the computer desk and it had a Commodore 64C and a 13" portable colour TV on it originally.
It finally became an Internet desk at some point in the mid '00s when I got my own place.
I’m still using it right now… and kind of afraid that if I mention its age, it will spontaneously fall apart.
Let’s just say that it’s older than Google.
This was a thing even into the mid 2000s in my household :)
Added to my newsboat RSS file
We had an internet desk. Was technically my mom’s computer but I used it so much that it might as well have been mine. Used to visit Cartoon Network’s website when I wasn’t playing Doom or Quake at that age. xD
