P
Paul McNally
Guest
These days, we sit down at a PC or whip out a smartphone, and we are connected to pretty much every corner of the world. There was a time, however, when going online meant physically wrestling the family telephone into a pair of rubber cups and hoping nobody breathed too loudly near the modem.
For me, it was an Amstrad CPC, an acoustic coupler, and later a Protek Cirkit 1200 modem. At one point, we had a landline handset that didn’t quite fit, so the whole thing became a MacGyverized contraption of plastic, wires, prayer, and tape. My brother had his allotted time. I had mine. My dad went on after us. This wasn’t just “using the computer.” This was the evening routine. The family television had its channels, and the family phone line had its secret second life. The second 6 PM rolled past (the time when phone calls got cheaper in the UK), and we were online.
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