I was one of those kids who thought Election Night was about as cool as Christmas. Technology first became part of my ritual in 1988, when I was 12. That night in November, I decided to count up electoral votes as Peter Jennings declared states going for George H.W. Bush or Michael Dukakis.

So, using a World Almanac (printed on paper) and my IBM PC XT, I typed out every state’s name and printed the list on my dot-matrix printer. To figure out the Electoral College permutations, there was no online tracker in red and blue. If Peter wasn’t talking about a race that interested me, I couldn’t click around.

Another toy I didn’t have was OpenSecrets.org, the money-in-politics Web site of the Center for Responsive Politics, where I now work. Eighteen years after that election and 23 since the Center’s founding, technology has allowed “following the money” to become a mainstay of political reporting. Unless you’re still running on an IBM XT.