There are two types of people in this world: geeks and people who hate being called geeks. To me, “geek” means dedication, bordering on obsession, to a concept or idea whether that be music, gaming, art, or whatever else you get excited about. Personally, I’m a tech geek, and I wear that title proudly! I’m obsessed with technology, past, present and future, and the more I can learn about it the happier I am. So can you imagine how excited this geek was when she discovered the Living Computer Museum in Seattle??
The LCM is an homage to the history of computing, dating all the way back to the early ’60s, when coding was all paper, no screens. It’s amazing to think that it took thousands of years to invent wheeled suitcases (seriously, the first one was made in 1970), and in just fifty years we’ve gone from room-sized computers with paper-and-ink programs to touchscreen watches that we can program with our phones.
What I love most about the Living Computer Museum is that it really is alive – you can play on almost every device they have! All fully functional, you can do everything from typing out your favorite quotes on old IBM punch cards to playing Lode Runner on the old Commodore 64, to fooling around with version 1.00 of some of the greatest software of today – Word, Excel, and System, the original Mac OS. Somebody pinch me!
I must admit, I was sad to leave at the end of the day. I’ve never spent so long in a museum without looking at my watch! This was only my first visit, and I know that the Living Computer Museum will be on my to-do list every time I’m in Seattle from now on.
I’ll end this post with a quote I heard at the end of my visit to LCM. These words perfectly sum up why I’m a tech geek:
“The best way to predict the future is to create it.” – Alan Kay
