My First Personal Computer | Tomoyuki Kojima (Dean, Faculty of Policy Management)
2006.12.07
In the past, writing manuscripts was a difficult task. I used 200-character manuscript paper, and for every single page I completed, I would waste several more. I moved on from handwriting and started using a word processor in 1984, during my time in Kyoto. This was a time when criticism was still strong, with people arguing that writing has a soul and that it was outrageous to rely on a machine to write. I was one of the earliest among my university colleagues, especially in the humanities, to use a word processor. From 1984 to 1985, I spent about a year and two months in Beijing as a specialist researcher at the Embassy of Japan. When I sent my manuscripts to Japan, there were no fax machines yet; we used telex.
After returning to Japan, NEC's 98 series of personal computers were at their peak. A younger colleague encouraged me to try using one, but I couldn't get the hang of it. I only began using one in earnest after I was appointed to SFC in March 1991. A workstation had been installed in my office, but I remember being at a loss because I didn't know how to use it. Before the new semester began, there was a training session for new faculty members on how to use Emacs, a UNIX text editor, and email. However, I still couldn't master it and continued to rely on my word processor. But then it became necessary to create and send the course syllabus and weekly lecture summaries. After repeated requests from my SA (Student Assistant) to "please start using a computer soon, Professor," I gradually began to make the switch.
The first one I bought was a Dell, and I remember it being heavy to carry around. I started using it in earnest when I took a sabbatical in the spring semester of 1995 and stayed at the East Asian Institute of The George Washington University in Washington, D.C., the U.S. capital. I had to send my monthly serial manuscript by email, which was a hassle. It wasn't broadband yet, but a dial-up connection, and I had to send it to the Japanese magazine publisher via a relay station in the United States. I had to call the publisher to confirm they had received it, wondering if the dial-up connection would even go through, or if it would get cut off midway.
Nowadays, we no longer have such troubles, but at the same time, excuses for late manuscript submissions like "the phone line was down" or "it was too slow and got disconnected" are no longer valid.
(Date of publication: 2006/12/07)