I have no idea if you will see this - and you shouldn't really care - but, damn, that was both interesting and thought-provoking. The kind of comment lowly readers such as I who never comment hope to come across

wow - that is the essence of "insightful" - thank you (not sarcasm - I know it can be hard to tell)

I have 3 brothers. Our dad got a little timex that we all messed around with - stored everything on audio cassettes (which he likely found funny because he had a bunch of old computer tape reels from work that we used the cases to store hot wheels and such in). Not too long after we had a commodore 64 which was incredibly awesome. We programmed (really) basic BASIC stuff on that (and played a lot of games). Then we finally got a PC - the first of which was "dad's" but we could use it. I clearly recall installing doom2 on it - and having to uninstall it each time - because 15 MB was too much space to take up. That was followed by the specifically "family" pc that sat in the most public spot possible and was to be shared by all with "homework" always having priority.

after years of reading slashdot I was moved to create a login because of your post. It is the single most interesting thing I have read in ages. Thank you for it - this is why I slog through the posts every day - golden nuggets of fascinating insight. it reminds me of James Burke's Connections (which I hope comes across as a positive mention to you - that's how I meant it)