HOME IS WHERE THE COMPUTER IS

HOME IS WHERE THE COMPUTER IS

REWIRE YOURSELF

by Richard Robinson

There are things you need and things you don’t. I mean, if you can read and write and have a job then you could probably settle for new shoes for the kids and an occasional night out and a reasonable Mastercharge balance. Right? Not in this nation of Joneses you can’t. Not when the people next door have just bought a video player and the service truck is across the street installing a TV projector. And there’s a rumor that somebody down the block has just put a. down payment on a home computer.

Leisure electronics are a case of not seeing the forest for the trees. Our morality is cash on the counter, decisions between VHSand Beta, Laserdisc and Discovision: Desire for the latest solid state plastic toys, without the least idea of what we’ll do with them once we get them home and plugged into the local power company.

Gone are the days when slumping in the rocking chair on the front porch with a stick a wood and a jack knife was enough to while away the afternoon. Today, most of us spend our time inside watching outside; watching through the illusion of television and its associated accessories.

Perhaps th,e most unusual item of the new leisure is the home computer. At first glance, a computer seems the least likely item to find around the house. After all, it isn’t designed to entertain, sublimate, misinform, or mesmerize as are all other electronic toys. In fact, it requires the kind of intelligence that protests against the general run of home electronics. You don’t have to be smart to watch TV, honestly you have to be smart to turn the TV off. You don’t have to be very smart to comprehend and manipulate a video player either, although you have to be slightly smarter than the average TV watcher, which is perhaps the reason why video recorder sales aren’t booming like they should. To run a home computer you have to be reasonably smart. So the home computer, while perhaps the most statusy of electric toys, is one that is taking the longest to be wired in place in the average American home.

In the past few years the cost of home computers has gotten lower and lower until today you can purchase a basic computer for less than $1,000; less, in some cases, than a VHS or Beta video player. Some of the simplest, smallest home computers are surprisingly cheap, such as the Radio Shack model for $249.00. But no matter what the price is, it is the understanding of what the home computer is and does that is keeping it from being embraced as a labor saving device, an electric can opener for the brain.

The basic concept of the home computer is already a proven success in the marketplace—one only has to count up the number of digital watches and pocket calculators in circulation. Both the digital watch and pocket calculator are home computers, albeit designed to perform limited functions: tell time, compute math problems above ten.

It isn’t a very big step from the pocket calculator to the home computer in terms of technology, but it is a giant step in terms of user comprehension. But if you are interested in taking the step, the rewards are quite extraordinary.

The home computer can do just about

TURN TO PAGE 62 anything your brain can do, with a good deal more dependability—barring power failures or lightning striking your house. It can keep your checkbook balanced to the point where it can tell you how much you spent on paper towels so far this year, it can remind you of everyone’s birthday, it can remember every letter you’ve written to anybody since you got your computer. In fact, it can store whatever information you tell it to store, and give you that information back in any manner you decide it should, including how many people you know in Boston whose middle name begins with the initial L.

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There are three basic elements in any house computer system. First, there fs a keyboard, much the same as a typewriter keyboard, where you talk to the computer, typing is information, typing out instructions and questions you want answered. Then there is the memory, the storage area where the computer keeps all the information you’ve given it, and sorts through that information when you ask questions. Finally there is some method of displaying answers to questions, usually a TV screen, where the computer can answer you back in a comprehensible fashion.

Typical of the current home computer systems is the 99/4 Home Computer sold by Texas Instruments. The basic system costs around $530 when purchased at a discount house. For this you get a keyboard module with a sufficient memory to provide good general computing power, the proper interface connection modules so the computer can talk to you by displaying on your home TV screen, and basic software module to make your computer smart.

Unfortunately, the $530 is only the start, since a truly effective home computer needs more brain power (a larger memory module) plus other software to tell it what to do. And, ideally, what is called a hard-copy printer that will type out the computer messages on sheets of paper rather than only displaying them on a TV screen. These extras will cost another $500 to $1,000. So the reality of a full blown home computer at this point is from $1,500 to $2,000.

Among the functions the Texas Instruments 99/4 will perform are “Household Budget Management,” “Tax/ Investment Record Keeping," “Weight Control And Nutrition,” as well as “Video Games,” “Indoor Soccer,” and “Beginning Grammar.”

In a way the home computer is a living Mastercharge card. It keeps track of whatever you’d like it to keep track of. It can also challenge larger computers on their own turf. Call up and have your computer talk to your bank’s computer to sort out all that nasty human error.

Does anybody heed a computer? Not really. It is a toy, a complicated scratch pad. But like all new electronic toys it can be manipulated to your advantage, it can be used as a tool to expand your ability to deal with a myriad of factors.

If you’re interested in a home computer the best thing to do is find the nearest personal computer store—they’re located in most large cities across the country—and find out what’s available to do what for how much before you put your cash on the counter for any particular make and model .J