Plutopia’s own Jon Lebkowsky was an early adopter of digital technology and the internet. On this episode of the Plutopia podcast, Jon presents a personal history of digital tech, life online in the 1990s, the internet, and much more.
Jon Lebkowsky:
So I heard that you could get a pretty decent computer, personal computer, an IBM PC clone from a company that was called PC’s Limited. And PC’s Limited was actually a DBA for a company called Dell Computers. So I bought one of the first Dell computers, which was through PC’s Limited. And carted it home and I had this computer and this amber monitor, no color, just amber, that was it. And a stack of manuals like this [holds hands to suggest size], huge stack of manuals, one for each computer program and one for the computer itself and one for the monitor and all this stuff that I had to read through and learn. And I started kinda banging away on the computer and then it’s like, okay, Marsha, now what I wanna do next is I wanna log in via long distance to this system that’s out in California and it’s gonna be about 10 bucks an hour. And this led to a rather tense discussion. And of course, acknowledging who wears the pants in the family, we squashed that idea.
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Currently cohost of Plutopia News Network, Jon was formerly CEO of FringeWare, Inc. and editor/publisher of FringeWare Review; associate editor at bOING bOING and Factsheet Five; writer for Mondo 2000, 21C, Wired, Whole Earth Review, Austin Chronicle; sub-editor at Millennium Whole Earth Catalog; and blogger at Worldchanging. A member of the online community The WELL for over 30 years, he cohosts three WELL forums: VC (virtual communities), Media, and Civil War (.ind) conferences.