Dear Commons Community,

I just published an e-Book entitled, The Computer Wasn’t in the Basement Anymore:  My Fifty + Years in Education Technology (1970-2021).  Edited by my wife, Elaine Bowden, it traces fifty plus years of working with education technology.  The idea for this book came from my colleague, Charles Graham, from the University of Utah, who read my novel, Our Bathtub Wasn’t in the Kitchen Anymore, that traced a young man’s life growing up in the South Bronx in the 1950s and 1960s. 

After reading the novel, he sent me this email:

“I found myself wishing that you hadn’t ended where you did.  Because the Vietnam War seemed to be such an important part of your learning and struggle with the truth around you…I was also hoping to find out how you chose to move into educational technology and ultimately online/blended learning and become a player in that domain.  Volume 2: The Computer Wasn’t in the Library Anymore .” (Graham., May 20, 2020)

My major purpose in writing The Computer Wasn’t in the Basement Anymore.. is to share my insights and experiences,  all of which involved some aspect of education technology, and included administrative, instructional and research activities.  The title reflects how computer technology, once relegated to out of the way places such as basements, has blossomed with the ubiquity of the Internet, social networking, and smartphones.  Computers are now everywhere in every room of every home, office, restaurant, industry, store, school, college, and in our pockets. 

While my personal journey is the common thread in The Computer Wasn’t in the Basement Anymore…, the book also provides a history of the evolution of education technology between 1970 and 2021, the time during which I worked with  all types of hardware and software – from plug board computers to large mainframes, to emerging PCs, to the Internet, and to the latest iPhones and handheld devices.  In reflecting back, I came to see that these decades weren’t just about technology but about how events in the larger institutions (CUNY and SUNY), with which I was affiliated as well as the broader society were integrated into a complex web of interactions that shaped and molded everything.  I also included over 300 mentions of students, faculty and colleagues with whom I worked.

It is available as an e-Book at Amazon (Kindle), Barnes and Noble (Nook), and BookBaby  and priced at under $10.

Tony

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