Being Raised by the Internet

Article note: I've told this story many times, but posts like this always make me reflect on it. I grew up comfortable, but one of the most consequential things that ever happened to me was the series of computers my parents kept me supplied with when I was young. They weren't (mostly) nice, recent, or high-end machines, and most of them weren't new, but I had a little Pentium MMX Winbook XL, and a whole assortment of aging Macs, and some junker old PCs that I could play with fearlessly, and it set the course of my life. There were some nicer machines that I could use and later bought for me, but the ones that _mattered_ were the ones I could play with. I learned more about computers fixing and hacking on those machines than I did from college. That Winbook ran like a dozen operating systems over its life (Windows 98, 2000, and Server 2003. SuSE 7.2 from the physical boxed media. Debian. Slackware. BeOS. At least one of the BSDs but I honestly don't remember which. Some truly weird stuff like Syllable). I cobbled internet access in various cheap-to-free ways before having broadband (mostly from UK nearby). I ran an Appletalk network along one wall of my room. Sure, I played a lot of video games, but I learned networking, and systems administration, and repair, and deeply how computers work. The same story come up last week because one of the folks I lunch with was asking everyone what the best gift they've ever received is; there's your answer. I hear similar stories from a many of the really engaged students I work with. Most of them naming some specific old dumpster-dive Dell tower or repurposed Chromebook or whatever that was _the_ machine that was their education. I wish I knew a reliable way to create an experience like that for every kid that shows any sort of proclivity.