***<\/p>\n
We\u2019re in the \u201cpost\u2011PC\u201d era, a term that accurately describes how phones \u2014 the true universal computer \u2014 ran over the desktop.<\/p>\n
For roughly 20 years, from the 1990s to the 2010s, the family computer (always a desktop) was the household symbol of modernity in Brazil, a prerequisite for promising futures and the only gateway to the internet. It competed for space with the TV or, in larger homes, earned its own room where residents did schoolwork, casual research, played games, and spent time on primitive sites from a web dominated by written text.<\/p>\n
It was the \u201cfamily computer.\u201d<\/p>\n
From what I remember, this now-anachronistic device reached most homes in Brazil in two big waves. The first, in the 1990s, was driven by the sector\u2019s opening after years of government protectionist policies through the late 1980s, and flooded by the Paraguayan gray market, where heavy, noisy beige boxes were sold at friendlier, tax-free prices.<\/p>\n
The second wave was an internal one, a direct result of the \u201cComputador para Todos\u201d (\u201cPC for all\u201d) program \u2014 a digital-inclusion initiative launched by the federal government in 2005<\/a> that made \u201clegalized\u201d computers cheaper and easier to buy on credit. That period coincides with what many (let\u2019s admit it, somewhat senior young people) remember as the golden age of the Brazilian internet: blogs, MSN Messenger, an amateur early YouTube, and, on top of it all, Orkut holding social glue.<\/p>\n ***<\/p>\n We\u2019re in the \u201cpost\u2011PC\u201d era, a term that accurately describes how phones \u2014 the true universal computer \u2014 ran over the desktop.<\/p>\n
![\"Young](\"https:\/\/manualdousuario.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/eu-computador-familia-2003.jpg\")