Computers were a skill. They were taught in classrooms as a skill. Skills give you power over your tools because you work them as an expert and that is leverage to multiply externally.

And then computers became an A/B tested telemetry-based advertising conduit to brains for SaaS recurring revenue.

I landed one a few years back for £15. The HDD was shot, so I installed an SSD - huge improvement! Only 350Mhz CPU but with tweaking and optimising, it plays games and even many MP4 films pretty decently. Not bad for a low-end 1999 computer! ☺️

At some point I'll put together a thread about this...