March 7, 2007

In May of 2003, Adam Kalsey sent out the call to 11 people to submit the personal stories of their early experiences with computing technology, and send him the links. The stories were posted on the individuals' own blogs and linked from Kalsey's own post Newly Digital: A distributed anthology of early computing experiences.

Says Kalsey, in starting off this project:

Newly Digital is an experimental writing project. I’ve asked 11 people to write about their early experiences with computing technology and post their essays on their weblogs. Some have written about their first computers or learning to program. Others wrote about their first experiences with the Internet or a budding computer technology. Some stories are short and some span several printed pages.

This is different than a traditional anthology. Every story is hosted on its author’s weblog. Each story has links to all the others. Although I’m the editor of the anthology in the sense that I chose who to invite and the general subject, I didn’t read any of the stories before they were posted to the anthology. I’ll be reading them for the first time at the same time you do.

Once the original piece went live pointing to the initial 11 stories, the reader submissions started pouring in and a rather sizeable library of stories detailing the loss of computing virginity was assembled. These pieces are fascinating reading. Kalsey posted what he saw as a Best of Newly Digital a short while later. His own I was Newly Digital story is out there, as well. (It looks like Kalsey and I shared similar beginnings; we both started with a TI-99/4A.)

I was quite pleased to have run across this little goldmine in a Google search for something or other a short while ago. I will certainly have to put together my own Newly Digital writeup and post it here when I can find time. Kalsey's project took place several years ago, but I'd love to hear such "early days" stories from my readers here, in the comments thread. Anyone have an experience to share?

Posted by blakespot at March 7, 2007 7:24 AM