The last time Bob King used a computer, a mouse was a pesky rodent that got in pantries and the commands that made computers work were stored in human, not machine, memory.
It was 1978, and King punched numbers into an ancient machine to track inventory at an auto parts store.Now, nearly 20 years later, King is marveling over the "really simplified" computers in the new Neighborhood Networks Computer Center at St. Mark's Tower, a senior citizen apartment complex.
So far King has played several hands of computer solitaire and dabbled with a genealogy program on one of the center's four Pentium machines.
"It's so different from what it was then," said King, who is 69. "You don't need to have as much memory as you used to have.
"It's quite exciting. It's going to be a real good thing around here."
The center is one of two - the other is at St. Mark's Garden in Kaysville - launched Wednesday as part of a nationwide initiative to put computer technology in the hands of those bypassed by the Information Superhighway.
Neighborhood Networks is the creation of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. The program relies on private partners to equip the centers, which are at low-income and assisted-living complexes that receive HUD money.
The centers serve several purposes. One goal is to make residents more self-sufficient and employable.
At St. Mark's Tower, the computers will give many residents who don't get out much a virtual window to the world. They'll be able to participate in Internet chat rooms and send e-mail to family and friends - and even tell a congressman or two what they think.
"We feel it is going to help with depression, isolation and build self-esteem," said Diane L'Etoile, director at St. Mark's.
John Milchick, HUD's Utah state coordinator, proved the Internet's ability to make human connections in a computer class he taught recently at St. Mark's.
Using a laptop computer, Milchick demonstrated how Internet search engines can be used to track down people. He found the address of one man's brother, whom the St. Mark's resident hadn't seen or heard from in more than 15 years. And he located an old friend of another resident.
"The only limitations on this are really people's imaginations in how automation and computers can benefit other people," Milchick said.
But residents of St. Mark's Tower aren't the only ones benefiting from the new computer center.
The center also will serve as a technology hub for others who lack access to computers. The Central City Community Center, across the street from St. Mark's Tower, plans to bring day-care kids over regularly to use the equipment.
People staying at a nearby Traveler's Aid overflow shelter will have access to the center. Also, the African American Task Force for Substance Abuse Prevention will offer computer classes for students in its at-risk program.
The center is turning out to be a catalyst for human contact, too. Students in the psychology and gerontology programs at the University of Utah will teach computer classes to guide residents through cyberspace, L'Etoile said.
And residents are bonding with one another.
Betty Pierce, who moved to St. Mark's five months ago, spent part of an afternoon teaching another resident who had never touched a computer how to play solitaire. Pierce, who founded the Paradise Genealogical Society in Butte, Calif., in 1969, said she hopes to use the computers to inspire others to take up family history work.
"If they get interested in writing their family history, it gives them something to think about rather than just sitting in a room and doing nothing, which some of them do," Pierce said. "Once they see how much they can do with a computer, I think they'll like it."
Nationwide, there are 150 Neighborhood Network centers.
"It's just getting started in Utah," Milchick said. "Our goal is to move beyond these two to other assisted projects, and snowball into many more of these so that every public housing project and every single person, be that a poor child or a senior citizen, has access to these resources that the mainstream have access to every day."
Key to that vision will be partnerships like those that made the two St. Mark's centers a reality, he said. The LDS Church donated genealogy software, Waterford Schools gave computer games, and Xmission is providing Internet access. The Episcopal Diocese of Utah, Danville Development Corp. and Central City Community Center also are partners in the project.