Here it comes- Ready or Not!

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Ch-ch-changes.   That’s the one certainty upon which we can rely.

I have always relied upon state-of-the-art (SOTA) tools. For my simulation and development efforts some 4 decades ago, my office mate was a PDP-8.  Right next to it was my tape punch and Hollerith card punchers.  I also had an IBM MT-ST.  (This was a very fancy IBM typewriter that employed metalized cards (like Holleriths) to record and play back pages of documents.)  We could edit and save documents with ease (or so I thought, compared to the rest of the world).  These devices also required my office to be on the order of 400 square feet.

But, that’s not all I had.  Our facility had a SOTA facsimile unit.  (No one called it a fax, yet.) This device was about 2 feet long, upon which you secured your document, and a “needle” moved down the document (as it rotated around), transmitting its data to another device somewhere else (in our case to our other offices, some 500 or 3000 miles away).

Let’s move forward a decade.   Things are much simpler now!  We are thrilled to have each of our employees supplied with SOTA tools.  Everyone has a small (no laughing, now) Osborne computer.  Yup- a 7 inch screen imbedded in a Singer sewing machine type device.  It only weighed 28 pounds, complete with its own keyboard, numeric keypad, and 180 kilobyte floppies (5 ¼ inches).

Yes, you read those numbers right.  (By the time the next improvement rolled around, they had 9 inch screens and two 360 kilobyte floppy units.)


 

I had a “small” dot matrix printer, too.  Our facility had an NEC ball-printer (kind of like a computerized IBM typewriter) that was capable of printing 55 characters a second (yes, that was the top speed) of perfect type.  It was so loud we had to enclose it in a 3 foot by 2 foot by 2 foot enclosure, replete with sound deadening foam (to keep it down to a respectable 50 decibels). We had two fax machines- the size of a small typewriter in each of our locations.  I even managed to link (no one used the term networking, yet) the computers together! (Think tin cans and string, not much more sophisticated.)

I also closed up my Osborne and traveled the world with my “portable” computer.  I had SOTA luggage, too- a “Straight Jacket”, that held two suits, and four sets of underwear, shirts, socks, as well as my toiletries.  It had a handle, so it could be conveniently carried under my shoulder on my left, as I swung the “Ozzie” in my right.  You should have seen me fly through O’Hare, Miami, and Narita.  I was definitely in shape, lugging my forty pounds of luggage at speeds reaching 10 miles per hour through the gates.  (Security?  You have GOT to be kidding!)

The next two decades provided us smaller portables (as I type right now on a netbook; my laptop is not used when I travel overseas, since our “security” considers it plausible to inspect – and retain- the data on my hard drives, which puts our clients at tremendous risk). I have two 24 inch monitors, a color laser, a black-and-white laser, and a scanner on my two desks in my office.  (My fax device is in the cloud, now.)

But, really, the technology has only been incrementally improved.  I still get exasperated at how slow the units are starting up.  I am perplexed when (what I consider to be simple) computations do not instantly appear on the screen.  Of course, I now am designing complex medical devices that I would never have even considered before.  (For our 3D printers, which are down the corridor.)

I still remember my first internet efforts, all 12 digits with no letters, no suffixes (com, gov, edu).  I am amazed at those changes. Now, comes the next real change, I think.  Our desktops are passé!

Enter the universe of laptops, tablets, and smartphones.  Conceived by many, but really first executed by Apple, tablets may bring radical change to our workplaces.  More of my generation (and the one behind me) will stick with laptops.  But, the mobile workface will carry their two pound tablets, some with external keypads, as they move from one place to the next- or travel (G0d, please make our air travel enter the 21st century sometime this decade!)  My new tablet automatically sychs with my smartphone- one touch and the document, phone call, or website moves from one to the other.  And, our walls will be replete with large screen monitors that share video, text, and audio with our compatriots around the globe.

Are you ready?

Roy A. Ackerman, Ph.D., E.A.

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14 thoughts on “Here it comes- Ready or Not!”

  1. And I thought I was old. When I tell IT folks that I used to code in Assembler language, they look at me like I’m some ancient relic or someone from outer space. It has been an interesting ride to see how fast things are changing nowadays. It used to take 10 years for things to change, now it’s only about 2-3 years, or even faster. Interesting time to live in, and it forces you to change.

    1. Now, who’re you calling old, Nancy? I might be tempted to challenge you to a “walker” competition!
      I never dealt with Assembler- instead, I was forced to learn FORTRAN and BASIC, which were more conducive for engineering applications. (I am a chem e…). But, yes, as an undergraduate, my Hollerith cards were carried in shoeboxes to the second floor, where they were fed to the massive (I seem to recall 500 sq ft) unit that processed our requests from 1 to 4 each afternoon. (Other languages were processed in the AM, the evening, and the wee hours).
      As the ad for Virginia Slims used to say… You’ve come a long way, baby!
      Roy

      PS- thanks for dropping in. Love to see you repeat the performance 🙂 .

  2. Great post Roy – I remember the first “mobile” phone I ever had was the size of a smallish duffle bag. It’s hard to imagine where we go from here. Probably cybernetics….

    1. Tor:
      I never had one of those. Instead, I proudly traveled with the weaker brick (The Radio Shack phone). To circumvent it’s 0.6 v. 3 W power, I connected it to a magnetic antenna on my roof (which was carried in my straight-jacket, I might add)!
      I am more than intrigued with the active walls. (OK- I should tell you that I worked with an active wall of a different sort some 35 years ago- it was a double-paned glass with a hollow center. During the day (summer), insulating balls filled the space that absorbed the sun’s energy and kept it outside the home. At night, the cavity was emptied. The reverse situation obtained in the winter. These new walls can be clear or opaque, possess touch screen technology, etc. The end of the enclosed cubicle- the beginning of the open view space.
      Roy

  3. No I am not and I will never be. Being one of the technologically crippled I really find it hard to keep up. But sadly, it has still been a struggle for me. Maybe because I just get tired and don’t make the effort or maybe I lose interest after all that jazz and talk about it just making it too much to hold on to 😉

    At school I was all wide eyed when we were introduced to the PC in Grade 3! All that changed when I was introduced to the LCD screens in Grade 10 and we had to throw out the heavy fat ol’ pc. But then when laptops attacked; all that changed again!

    Gearing up every other day for the new changes makes it a little challenging!
    🙂

    Hope you have a lovely day!

    1. Hajra:
      You just have to learn to go with the flow. I recall one very funny scene- it took about a 6 months to unfold. My son, who was then 2, was desperate to play on my computers. I told him they were networked (they were) and you needed to log in. To do so, you would have to type your name (D A N I E L) and a password (then, 4July, his birthday). He mastered that within two days and played for hours on end with “his” computer.
      About 6 months later, his mom had finally succumbed to the end of the 20th century and was using a computer. She was having problems with her mouse (vociferously). Daniel ran to her, showed her what was what, and said “Dis is how we do dat, mommy…”
      Roy

  4. Oh I am feeling so old. The pictures are fabulous Roy especially if they are yours.
    I wonder what the world will be like 10 years from now.
    Star Trek – bring it on – replicators and no food shortage, no obesity, no health problems as a result of diet. Or will it be a world where bodying up (meeting in person) is a thing of the past and we live in a world of isolation physically but live virtually on-line. I think I read too much science fiction…
    Great post Roy

    1. Roberta:
      You and me both. That’s among my favorite reads. I started on Tom Swift (not Jr.). They were my older relatives. (My dad was the youngest of many, many kids- his eldest sister had died at 40 before he even entered high school; and he married late…) Amazing how many of the sci-fi concepts were already in use. Who knows- are we in for a world as envisioned by Orson Scott Card or Ray Bradbury????

      Roy

  5. Yes, I’m ready . . . or at least excited. It’s amazing to me how far we’ve come. I was involved in a conversation about music the other day and how I used to listen to 8-track tapes and, of course, records. Now we can put crazy amounts of music on one tiny portable device. I’ve been through many changes business-wise as well, from typewriters to what we have now. It’s fascinating to me.

    1. Leanne:
      I, too, have a slew of records (don’t you dare touch them!) and a fancy player! But, I did give up my 8 tracks when I got rid of my first new car…I do miss cassettes(only because I have a slew of seminars and books on them. I need to convert them to CD’s.) I have really stopped using my CD player (even in my car), except on rare occasions- because radio has gotten better (or maybe because I have moved to where the stations are better) and I listen to books via my GPS on a memory chip!
      I still miss a typewriter- but have set up my computer to let me “type” on PDF files to afford my ability to “complete” them (why folks DON’T set them up automatically to do so is beyond me…)
      Thanks for dropping in and leaving your words of wisdom…
      Roy

  6. WOW! I so loved learning the history of your experience with technology. My dad has been a computer junkie since he was young, but I don’t think he saw the likes of that IBM MT-ST. What a beautifully ginormous machine! =)

    Nevertheless, you’re still much more tech-savvy than I am with your tablet. My silly Mac is too user-friendly to make me feel like a tech whiz! =P

    1. Thanks for your comments, Samantha!
      I actually learned on an MT-ST as an undergraduate. I was an editor of the school newspaper and we composed the entire publication using this FIRST generation device (which made my PDP seem tiny; by the time I bought one for my company, it was compact (the size of a night-table and an attached typewriter (via a 1/2 inch diameter cable).
      I have been a techie almost my whole life- from hydroponics to dialysis long before the rest of the world even knew of what I spoke…
      I have never been bitten by Mac-fever… that’s my son’s generation (who is 1/2 generation younger than his siblings- but he grew up on PC’s.)

  7. I remember a lot of these items. One of the first offices I worked in we had dot matrix printers with the foam sound dampening as well. The entire printer was encased in hard plastic, and in a separate room. As you have seen from one of my articles, I used to own an Apple IIe, my first computer. That was back in the 80’s. I was taught office skills on an AB Dick word processor that was linked to other computers. I remember shooting random, anonymous messages to the girl I was infatuated with. Hearing all this equipment history from you was truly unique and interesting. Thanks for sharing.
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