> yes there were folks from before that saw a PDP or whatever but they were rare, and usually either deep in academia or IBM etc.

Was it a case of being rare, or of computers being something they used at work (and only work) so they simply didn't talk about computers outside of that context?

Judging from stories of the early days of personal computers, those people mostly fell into two camps: those who were excited about getting their hands on a computer of their own, and those who dismissed personal computers as useless toys. The latter would make the number of people exposed to computers seem artificially small.

I bring this up because I have encountered people who used minis and mainframes over the years. They were a fixture in major corporations and even medium sized businesses by the late 1970's (which is when personal computers started getting the attention of the public).