when coming of age in the 1980’s meant that photocopiers were expensive machines that only the best schools could afford; otherwise you had them purple-inked mimeographs.

And if you had a “conservative” professor in college, s/he would not accept essays written by word processors, because a “genuine” essay had to be typewritten.

Yes, in high school, computers were still treated like some sort of vocational trade, therefore good students were steered away into “hard science” subjects like chemistry or physics, because there would be a “critical shortage” of scientists and engineers in the coming years. And I got out of college just in time for the Cold War to end, so there was a total overabundance of chemists and physicists, most of whom eventually became IT professionals.

Hell, I spent some of my early years in rural Japanese elementary schools, where pens were considered “dishonest” so you had to use pencils for everything. Getting car rides to school was forbidden, because it was too “decadent”; good kids walked for miles through snow, and getting your hands and ears numb “toughened you up”.

We should go back to the days when kids solve all their problems on chalkboards they take home from school, because paper notebooks are “wasteful” of the nation’s resources.