From Arrow Keys to AI

Written by Ilana 🕒 ~8-minute read 📄 ~1,589 words

I don’t remember the exact date, but somewhere between the age of six and eight, I saw a computer for the very first time.

Not in a photo.
Not in a school.
Not even in a movie.

It was inside my own house.

My family had bought it for my brother and for office work—mostly for his studies, and as an alternative to the typewriter and typesetting. But to me, at that age, I didn’t know what a computer was, what it could do, or why it was such a big deal. All I heard were murmurs in the house: “Computer is coming.” And just like that, I caught their excitement—not from the machine, but from the people.

I wasn’t home when it arrived. When I came back from school, there it was—a small white TV-like screen with a suitcase box next to it.
“Oh, this is called a computer.” I saw it with my eyes wide open and a happy face.

It looked futuristic. Mysterious. I waited for someone to switch it on and show me something—some magic.
I seriously had no idea what it could do.

Back then, just seeing a computer was a big deal. But the truth? That first moment didn’t blow my mind. It wasn’t something I had wished for, dreamt about, or longed for. It just… arrived. And I was curious, sure. But not amazed.

Then, a few days later, men with floppy disks and quiet authority came into our house. They turned on the computer, inserted the floppy disk—black screen, blue screen, questions—and typed mysterious codes into a black screen called DOS. Rebooted. Typed more. Rebooted again. I sat beside them the entire time, watching, waiting, hoping they’d say the golden words: “Yes, it’s working. Everything is set now.”

That white box got a hold on me from that day itself.

Somewhere in that silent observation, a belief rooted itself deep within me:
“No matter what the error is, if you stay calm and follow the right steps, you can fix it.”

My brother had this fat, yellow-page-like book—one of those big DOS command books filled with code. It was Greek and Latin to me. I hated it because I couldn’t understand anything. And since childhood, I’ve liked to see things visually—pictures, photos, a visual presentation. Not to read a word and imagine. I wanted to see what was already there—way too early to imagine without knowing what to imagine.

For a few months, I would just sit next to the computer and stare at it. I got tired just by looking at it. Sometimes they let me use it, and the only thing I could do was type into the black screen and feel, “See? If you press a key on the keyboard, you see it on the screen.”
Yeah, it was fun for a few days—I typed my name, my friends’ names, and most of the words that came to my mind. Then… meh. Playing outside with friends and riding my bicycle was way more fun.

I think my brother must’ve felt the same. And do you know what he did? After a few months, he installed a car racing game on that digital typing machine.

Just four arrow keys.
That’s all I needed. But oh, the power they held!

When I pressed the left arrow, my whole body leaned left.
The right arrow? I tilted with it.
I became the car.

I still laugh remembering how my brother told me,
“You don’t have to move your body—just press the key!”

But those keys weren’t just controls. They were my superpower.
Imagine—a kid who only knew how to ride a bicycle, now driving a car and racing. Those arrow keys became my steering wheel into a thrilling new world.

Then came 3D Pinball, Captain Claw, Prince of Persia (DOS), Road Rash, Need for Speed, Winamp, Windows Media Player, and then the king—VLC.
These were the routines of my teenage years.

And somewhere along the way, it got etched in me:
“Computers are made for games and entertainment.”

And I loved and enjoyed it.

Years later—around 8th grade, I think—my school finally got a computer lab.
They’d ask us to open Microsoft Paint and draw.

Most kids struggled with the mouse.
Not me.

I strolled in like a movie hero. Confident. Cool.
I wasn’t just drawing.
I was showing off.

If only it had stopped there…

They soon introduced something called ‘C Language.’
And I thought, “Already I’m juggling two languages in life—now this one too?”
Not my cup of tea. But what to do?
Had to learn #include <stdio.h> and other random code words.
The rest of C code I learned? I don’t know where it is in my mind… I think it’s not there.

Shift + Delete.

Then came the next big thing—the Internet.
Oh man.

Yahoo Chats. Penguin Messenger.
“Where are you from?”
“Hello, I’m from…”

“ASL”

No agenda. Just the thrill of talking to someone from another country.

I still remember Penguin Messenger had this feature—you could see what the other person was typing before they hit send. My brother introduced me to it, and he’d often reply before I even finished asking something. I was like, “What magic is this? Is it telepathy?” Then I realised it had to be the messenger doing it. I asked him straight—“Are you seeing what I type as I type?”—and he couldn’t deny it. The question was too direct, and we were in the early internet era, after all. He admitted it: there was an option in the messenger you could turn on or off. Then what, as usual try it on friends and have fun!

Emails? Meh.
But Yahoo Chat Rooms? Absolute fire.

As I grew, so did the computers.
Desktop became laptop.
Laptop became tablet.
Phone became everything.

But so did the problems—blue screens, viruses from pendrives, random crashes.

And then came the saviour:

“Laaaaaadies and gentlemen…
LIVE from the open-source arena,
In the left corner — THE NEMESIS of blue screens and virus machines…
Give it up for the open-source LEGEND, the LINUX LION, the TERMINAL TYRANT…
UUUUUUUUBUUUUUNTUUUUUUUUU!!!”

Introduced to me by a close friend, Linux Ubuntu became my rescue OS.
With it, I felt like a computer doctor.
Something wrong? Bring me your HDD. I’ll fix it.

But here’s the hard truth—Ubuntu was the hero I needed, not the one I wanted.
Because deep down, I still craved entertainment.
And back then, Windows was the king of fun.

Sometimes, Linux felt like a strict parent.
Switching back to Windows? That felt like breaking free. (What an irony.)

All credit to that one friend who introduced me to open source, really.
He was obsessed with computers.
Once, while choosing a career, he told me:

“I know computers. That’s it. I don’t know anything else.”

Me? I wasn’t that hardcore.
For me, computers were still playthings. Entertainers.

I even tried to get into Computer Science in college—but it didn’t happen. Thank God!
I moved on.
To the next interesting thing.

Fast-forward to 2026.

When the world says computers are becoming conscious—
learning, talking, thinking, passing exams, taking jobs…

I see it differently.

They’re still calculators.
Yes—mind-blowingly powerful.
But at their core?
Just number crunchers.

All of this—AI, predictions, word generation, code suggestions—it’s just math.
Sets.
Probabilities.
1s and 0s.

I remember tirelessly testing AI’s logic in the early days—keen to prove it wasn’t really thinking, that it was too diplomatic, maybe even a little evil, or that it would turn evil eventually. I had my wins. But it kept improving. And slowly, without quite noticing, I started using it for productivity, for writing messages, for drafting letters. Then one day I typed out my broken childhood memories—half-formed, no proper sentences—and asked AI to rewrite them emotionally so I could send them to a school friend. I wanted to see if he’d catch that I hadn’t written it. He read it and almost cried. He said it sounded exactly like me. When I told him it was AI, he refused to believe it. I tried the same trick with a few more friends. Not one of them spotted it. The memories were mine. The words were the calculator’s.

That moment stayed with me.
Not because AI fooled my friends.
But because it made me realise something strange.
Even language — the most human thing — was becoming a calculable pattern.
If emotions could be reconstructed mathematically…
then what exactly was language?

What about the language of the universe?

Numbers.

“We unlock the universe with numbers.”

Rhythms of a heartbeat followed timing.
Music followed ratios and timing.
Light moved at a fixed speed.

Humans changed languages again and again across history.
But circles still behaved like circles.
Two plus two still remained four.

That is why numbers are called the language of the universe.
Not because humans created them—but because humans discovered that reality itself already obeyed them.

So, we definitely need our number-crunching friend along for the ride.

Looking back…

From watching engineers with floppy disks,
to leaning with arrow keys,
to escaping virus traps with Linux,
to now wielding AI like a super tool—

My journey has always been with the computer.

But now, I finally see it clearly:

“It’s not magic.
It’s logic.
It’s math.
It’s power—if you learn to control it.”

Not fearing it.
Not worshipping it.

Embracing it.

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