June 23, 2001

Fred: "I went on a trip with my wife Janet in the summer of 1975. We
accidentally stumbled into the storefront "community memory" projects
in Vancouver, BC, and in San Francisco, and the bay. I had been reading a
childrens book by a man named Bob Albrecht, and I looked him up in
Menlo Park, CA. He ran the Peoples Computer Company, and he took me into a
room and dramatically whipped a blue tablecloth off this box on the table:
it was the world's first microcomputer -- the Altair! I was hooked. I watched
Bob leading children around his offices building games and doing all kinds
of imaginative, creative projects on computers, and I went back to Chapel
Hill, NC, determined to do likewise."

Paul: What inspired you to teach others about computers?

Fred: "See above answers: Bob and his Peoples Computer Company."

Paul: What is your fondest memory?

Fred: "Three: Having my 3-year-old daughter Catie present in
Morrisville, NJ, in 1979, when the first copies of KATIE AND THE COMPUTER (my first
picturebook) came off the printing press. Second: Having Joan Lunden of  Good
Morning America (ABC-TV) trying out a spreadsheet on the first Macintosh
computer in 1983 when they were first introduced.  Second: Holding the
first ever Kids Computer Festival at the headquarters of Alabama Power
Company in 1986 in Birmingham, Alabama, and having thirteen Jefferson County
schools showcasing student computer projects that they had done themselves."

Paul: Do you feel computers have revolutionized how we look at the world? Why or why not?

Fred: "Yes. I think that they represent a major step in our moving from the so-called "real world"
of direct, face-to-face interactions with natural parts of our day-to-day world to a new mediated
interaction with virtual representations of real things. I think the computer lets us extend the
fantasy element of our imaginations into our daily entertainment, business,cultural, artistic, and
social relationships. We are finding, with computers, that we don't have to see real people, or talk
to real people, or do real things to be satisfied that we are leading a meaningful life. We can
interact with virtual representations of people via email, chat, IM,telephone, etc. We can play video
games, virtual golf, virtual NASCAR, and watch computer-enhanced TV shows and movies. I think
we are just at the beginning of a huge 'virtualization' of our reality in which less and less of what we
do will be actually real. The test would be 'What would an early 19th-century person or early 20th-
century person think if we could have them observe our everyday lives.' I feel they would think we
were pretty weird. And we are soon going to become a lot weirder!

(Thanks for this thinking and remembering exercise, Paul.)

Fred"