New Delhi, Oct. 18 -- I can't help but go back in time to when I started a magazine, Computers@Home, with IT publishers Cyber Media. This was in 1996, and the average person had no idea what to do with a computer.

The internet and 'multimedia' had just arrived. I was tasked with championing the cause of personal technology-although we called it "home computing". I spoke to the influencers of that time, visited schools and spoke to teachers about how just one internet-connected computer could be a game changer. I was mostly sent packing and told things like, "Madam, we have a syllabus to finish. We have no time to play with computers". One teacher even scornfully asked me what would happen to "the child's handwriting".

From a time when t...