Emily Prevatt
Emily first used a computer in 1997 in the computer lab at NMSU to check her school email. Her first owned computer came in 2000-a
work laptop from PricewaterhouseCoopers for data entry. She used the World Wide Web in college for research, writing papers, and
taking programming classes. She communicated with Ojito through the internet so he could help her with her COBOL homework. Later, she
used Napster to download music, she emailed, searched for jobs, made psters and banners, and planned her wedding online.
She thinks AI and smartphones have been the biggest changes in tecnology, especially being able to have a mini computer in your hand.
As an IT worker, she sees the internet as a helpful tool-great for staying connected, doing research, and navigating the world. One of
her favorite memories is going to the college computer lab to check her email and seeing so many people there. She also remembers having
to save files to a disk and print them at a store. She didn't use the internet much on early phones due to data charges.
She remembers how hard it was to search for things online. You had to know the full web address (like typing "www."), and there
was only one browser. She said it was frustrating at times, but now it's much easier with modern search engines.
Ojito Prevatt
Ojito first used a computer in 1990 in his high school computer lab, where he took a computer class and used it for writing papers.
His first computer was a 15-year-old MacBook that his brother, who worked at Apple, gave to him in 1995. After college, he built his own
PC in 2000, which he used for playing video games and for work. To play games, he used CDs and floppy disks since the games were stored on them.
He got internet at home in 1998 using a 56k dial-up modem, which made a loud connection sound. He first used the web during his
freshman year of college for computer science classes and research. As a musician, he also used the internet to buy songbooks
and research music. For road trips, he used to plan his routes by typing out highway directions from maps at the computer lab and printing them.
Fantasy Football & Tech Fixes
One of Ojito's favorite internet memories was playing fantasy football online in 1999. At work, his company used to play the game
on paper, but he and his friend Frank built a Microsoft Access database to keep track of the data. They eventually signed everyone
up on Yahoo and played digitally instead.
Ojito's first IT job after college was with a company called Software Architects, where he worked as a consultant for the pager
company PageNet during the Y2K scare. One of his main tasks was reviewing and updating massive amounts of C code to fix the Y2K
issue-changing two-digit year formats to four digits so that the year 2000 wouldn't be read as 1900. While working there, he
discovered a rounding error in the billing system. The bug caused the system to round message lengths incorrectly, leading to
unusually high charges for two-way pager users. After he fixed the bug, the system began charging customers correctly-by the
number of characters sent in each message. However, it took about two months of customer complaints before the company officially
informed everyone that messages were now being billed per character. Once that was made clear, people started limiting how much
they sent to avoid large bills.
JoAnn Mares
JoAnn Mares, my grandma, got her first computers in her late 40s or early 50s while working for her son, Ray. He gave her her first
personal computer, a Dell with a monitor, which she still owns today at age 69. She initially used it for accounting work, and now
uses it for everything from email and Facebook to checking bank information, reviewing her grandkids' apps, and logging into PowerSchool.
She was first introduced to computers in her earlier years while working at a Bank. Her first experience with a computer was intimidating.
At the bank, when integrating computers they had the employees in a computer training class. She had to type her name, she used just two
fingers and pressed "Enter." There were no mice yet, just keyboards, and if she made a mistake, she had to use the back arrow to fix it.
Once the mouse was introduced, she was confused by the name. "Why is it called a mouse?"" she wondered, until she saw it and realized
that's just what it was.
The bank used an internal internet system to send messages across departments, but she didn't really understand what the internet
was at first. It felt overwhelming. Everything she used to log was on paper, with huge ledgers going back months. When the bank switched
to storing data digitally on floppy disks, it became confusing and stressful. If she needed to check something from a few months back,
she had to physically find and insert the right disk.
About 15 years ago, JoAnn got internet at home using AOL dial-up. The first email she ever sent was to Ray, just to test if it worked.
She typed: "It's me."" Ray replied, "Yes, Mom, I know it's you. What are you doing?"" She wrote back slowly, "I'm checking the email.
Checking the internet out on the computer."
Although the internet was difficult to get used to, she was curious. She would search things just to understand what the internet could do.
She once looked up her own name and was shocked at how much information showed up. This made her nervous, she worried the computer might be
watching or tracking her. Still, she kept learning. She began using the internet to learn to write legal motions, write emails, and read news.
One of her favorite memories is also one of her most embarrassing. When a program froze at the bank, she thought the computer could hear her,
so she sat there talking to it for 15 minutes, asking it to "get out of this area" so she could finish her work. Her supervisor eventually
came in and asked what she was doing. JoAnn replied, "I'm talking to the computer. It's frozen."" The supervisor had to explain, "It can't
hear you" and had to show her how to fix it. JoAnn laughed about it later, but at that moment, she felt totally lost.
Today, she says the biggest change she's seen is how storage has evolved; from floppy disks to hard drives to the cloud, and how easy it
is to find and access information online. While she still doesn't feel fast or fully confident, the internet has helped her in many ways.
She said it's scary how much technology and AI can know about people, but she's proud of how far she's come, even if she's still learning.