Transcript
Introduction
The voice from the podium called them back. Over the next 6 years, 1 and 3 of them would flunk out the headmaster said, they might be the top seventh graders in Boston, but this was a school where even the best had to work hard. And that meant homework, 4 to 6 hours of homework at night said the headmaster. Paul stared at the man in his mind, he spoke to him, f*** you, I will never do homework. There were things he would do though because he wanted to do them. He tried out with a school band and made the cut, and he also decided to check out the computer club. It had a faculty adviser and for a clubhouse, a windowless room down in the basement, equipped with 6 terminals.
They look like TVs, but they had keyboards in front of them, which meant you could tell these TVs what to do, and that made all the difference. Paul had never liked TV. He called it the stupid box. He watches father -- he would watch his father watching the evening news after a day at Boston Gas. His father would sit in his easy chair with a box of Cheez-Its and his Manhattan, looking at pictures of car crashes and murder victims. And Paul would wonder to himself, why his dad would just want to sit and look at what somebody else wanted him to see and listen to strangers tell him what he should buy.