A Lifetime of Technology

My early years were spent listening to radio. There were tabletop radios and our car had a radio with push buttons to bring in your favorite AM station. When the transistor radio arrived it could fit in my shirt pocket and I could listen to that New Time Rock ‘n Roll before it would become that “Old Time Rock & Roll”. Television hit our home in the mid-50s in the form of a 21” Magnavox in an upright oak cabinet with a single 12” speaker. Music could be owned first on records of varying sizes before it went to tape. There was reel to reel, 4 track, 8 track, and cassette tapes before the ultimate physical record, the CD.

In college I took an office machines course to learn the Dura Mach 10 automatic typewriter. It punched a series of holes in a paper tape with each keystroke that could be played back with a light reader to type repetitive letters. My first real government job after the Navy required the use of a microfiche reader to go through pages of computer printouts. My second government job had me overseeing a typing pool that used IBM MT/STs that, similar to the Dura Mach 10, recorded typed pages on tape, magnetic tape. These evolved to eventually record the written word on large magnetic floppy discs and later hard drives.

I was lucky enough to be around when the first personal computers were brought into the computer department. They were considered to be play toys by the “big iron” main-framers in my department. They were much less expensive than the dedicated word processors of the day. Eventually the “play toy” personal computers replaced dedicated computer terminals and became as common as desk chairs.

I had two college students working for me as temps who told me about this new thing called the Internet. I could use my 300 baud dialup modem in my office to dial into the FIU computer and then I could type in an IP address to connect to computer systems at other universities around the world. It was tedious, but I could see potential. Then came Prodigy, a joint IBM and Sears project that put a graphical user interface (before Windows) on this new communications toy to access their collected archive of select information. I remember calling our department director (Manny for those of you who knew him) into my office to demonstrate this new concept. After several minutes of my demonstration he remarked, “Your know Jack, this Internet might just become something.”

When cellphones first came out, they were large clunky devices. The dream back then was to make them smaller. Eventually they shrunk to the size of the flip phone that was everyone’s dream. Then things changed and they started to get big again as phones got smarter and screen real estate became important. I remember watching with envy as Captain Kirk of Star Trek fame tapped his communicator and asked it a question and got a response. Today we take that technology for granted. Most of us anyway.

This brings me to a recent observation. While I spent my career surrounded by technology and have kept up with it as best I can in my retirement, others my age have seen that wave of technology pass them by. They have cellphones that they use as phones but little else. The “smart” in smartphones is near useless to them.

This was brought home recently when I attended a social event with others my age and found that the majority of my peers had little use for these new gadgets. They were obligated to have one, but most would be happy with an old flip phone if they could find one. My wife and I were the only ones who did any online banking. Several people said they had shopped online but still preferred to make most of their purchases at brick and mortar stores. The general feeling was that they didn’t trust that someone with knowledge they didn’t possess could steal their money.

I remember at one point in our dinner conversation a question about the advent of color film. I just touched the microphone icon on my phone’s screen and asked the question. In less than two seconds, my phone was telling all in the room that the first colored film was “A Trip to the Moon” in 1902 and that it had been hand tinted with dyes. A later color process called Kinemacolor would then replace the hand tint process. I then refined my question to when Kodachrome was invented, and the answer was 1935.

I was later approached by a couple of people and asked if I could add that widget to their screens where they could ask questions. This group of people were all well-educated. There were a few PhDs but degrees in mathematics, education, and the arts don’t assure a knowledge of computers and related tech. At least not for my generation. I would assume that this will be true of future generations as they follow their pursuits and newer tech puts them at a loss.

The scary part of this revelation was that recent political events would want to cut government expenses by forcing people to do more with their computers and smartphones. I can see where Social Security could save a great deal of money by requiring recipients to manage their accounts using technology that they don’t understand or be forced to visit an understaffed office. Now, with drastic cuts to the National Institute for Health (NIH) and its research, we could really use a tricorder.

[For those who didn’t follow Star Trek, a tricorder was a tool used by Dr. Leanard “Bones” McCoy, the chief medical officer aboard the Enterprise, to diagnose and treat medical conditions. It could scan a patient's body to detect diseases, injuries, and even identify alien life forms. It could also send life-sign information to the tricorder itself, allowing McCoy to check vital organ functions and detect dangerous organisms.]