I've been doing electronics and computers since 1980. I've actual built computers from scratch (you know, read the data sheets, chose clock generators, RAM and EPROM chips), add 7400 series TTL to select peripherals.
I've built a lot of things, including a detector to help align building-to-building Infrared laser links, and a box that connected to a phone line, and a number of voltages... you'd call the number, and it told you (via a speech chip) what the voltages are, twice, then hung up.
I've been an electronics technician, repaired Magnetic Amplifiers (a cool old technology from the 1960s), all the way up to 480v, 1000 AMP, 3 phase SCR packs. Oh.. and Cesium Beam Atomic Clocks. ;-)
I've programmed 6502, Z80, 6809, 8088 in Assembler, Basic, Fortran, Pascal, PL/N, Turbo Pascal, Delphi, Visual Basic, Python, C, C++.
It is my opinion that VB6 / Borland Delphi was the peak of user accessible programming.
I've used CP/M, MS-DOS, Windows, Multilink, Unix, Linux, RSTS/E, VAX/VMS.
I've networked with RS-232, DSL, T1, Cable Modems, Arcnet, ThinNet, 10,100,1000 Mb Ethernet, and Wifi.
I've used BBSs, AOL, IRC, FTP, Gopher, WWW, Usenet, RSS.
I've seen almost everything once... ask me anything.
[Edit]
To answer the questions at the top
1. 40+ years
2. User, Programmer, ISP Sysadmin/Sole Phone Support 200+ Users, Electronics Technician/Engineer, Developer/Field Support for an Inspection System, Manager of IS for a Marketing Company 15 years, and I've made gears for 5 years.
3. I'm wondering how I'm going to get a job... they've always fallen into my lap... I've never had to look before.
4. Computers are thousands of times faster, with millions of times the storage, and yet cheaper. You don't have to write our own Basic I/O System in order to get CP/M to boot... stuff just works. Persistent Internet is a thing... it used to be dial-up to CBBS, FidoNet, Usenet.
GIT is one of the greatest inventions of mankind. I used to make a ZIP file of my source code before I attempted changes... I still have stacks of floppies filled with almost identical ZIP files. GIT is about the only thing that has really improved in the software side of things.
5. I'd go back to the old way of social networking, blogs and replies, all powered by RSS.
6. Our current crop of Operating Systems (Linux, Windows, Mac) are all unsuitable for a world of persistent internet. They all default to the wrong thing... trusting programs the user runs with every resource the user is allowed to access. This has resulted in the chaos that is forced updates, virii, hacks every day. The opposite is to trust nothing, and only supply a process with the I/O and CPU time the user wishes to give it.. we're still a few years out. I've been making this prediction since about 2000.
7. If you've got an idea for something, just do it... don't talk about it or share it until AFTER it is done. If you talk first, your brain will get bored with it, before you've even started.
8. Atomic clocks are amazing things, once you get them fixed... you can put a pair of them into the X/Y channels of a scope, and the circle will just sit there, not going out of phase, for hours.