On January 24, 1984, Apple introduced the Macintosh personal computer
in a Super Bowl ad. Up until that ad, I’d struggled under the mistaken belief
that the only computers available were room-sized machines made by IBM.
Spellbound, I watched as a lithe, mallet-wielding woman outraced
storm troopers into a room filled with blank-faced workers. The woman
heaved her mallet into the Big Brother on the screen and ended his spouting of
computer dogma. The picture faded to announce the launching of the Macintosh and
I realized I had just witnessed the launch of a new era in computers. The Mac
was the first mass-market personal computer with a mouse and graphical user
interface. The iconic ad ran only once on national television in its full
60-second length, and no matter where you fall on the Apple V. IBM V. Microsoft
debate, one thing we can all agree on is the last 30 years have brought
mind-boggling changes to our world.
As I write this, I’m sitting in the silence of the library – okay, not
complete silence as the other patrons are furiously tapping on their laptop
keyboards, the printer is spewing out tax forms, and the lilt of children’s
laughter drifts from the story hour cubicle as they watch a live-stream video.
I’m struck by the changes in technology I see around me. Instead of the
paper-card catalogue that was the hallmark of my high school library, I see one
monitor screen after another proclaiming, Welcome to the Digital Catalogue.
Instead of reading the hardback version that is available a few book stacks
away, I’m reading Steve Jobs’ biography on an IPad (apropos, I’m sure). The
chapter I’m reading includes a brief review of the history of the Silicon chip
-- from the development of transistors in the late ‘40s that morphed into the
semiconductor breakthroughs used in the personal computer of today. This
transistor is the same type as that in a transistor radio, the hallmark of the
Cool Crowd at Cocoa Beach where I grew up. The special few who could afford a
transistor radio, kept the volume high enough that the rest of us could hear the
DJ from the local teen station issue his every 15 minutes warning of, “Time to
turn, time to turn, so you won’t burn.” As a group, we’d all flip over to the
other side to keep our tans even. This was back before we knew getting a deep
Florida tan might lead to cancer. Now a skin cancer warning comes with every
tube of sunscreen slathered on arms and legs and the IPod has replaced the
transistor radio on that same beach.
Oz in Color, Oh My!
In college, the entire floor of my dorm all paused from studying for
finals to secretly watch the annual showing of the film Wizard of Oz. Our dorm
had a color console television, which was a rare commodity. As Dorothy stepped
into Oz and the film changed from sepia tone to full color, we all chanted the
line, “Toto, I've a feeling we’re not in Kansas anymore,” The shift to full
color was something most of us with our black and white TVs had never seen. We
all sat entranced as Dorothy travelled through a vibrant colored Oz. Afterwards,
we agreed it had been as spectacular as we had imagined and definitely worth any
razzing for watching, at the advanced age of 19, all 101 minutes of the film.
My first good-paying job was measuring the depth of the rut made by an
ion beam in the silicon chips being tested. I used an instrument that had just
been invented. When my brother, who’d thought about being a lawyer at age 13,
asked me why didn’t I major in this specialty in college, I replied, how could
I? The technology was only two years old and I’d been out of college for five.
IBM, or “Big Blue” was poised to dominate the Information Age.
Other technology changes I see in the library around me – a group of
teens are using the calculator in their phone to do their math homework. Gone
are the unwieldy brick-sized calculators that cost a whopping $100. Adults are
gathering tax return information from featherweight laptop computers, not
room-sized behemoths with magnetic tapes and punch card machines – and death to
the data entry clerk who dropped the stack of punch cards. Heck, even the
espresso machine in the coffee shop next door to the library is a third of the
size of the golden wonder that lured us all into the only café on the beach
strip.
30 Years Later
It’s been 30 years since the introduction of the Mac. These 2014 teens,
who at Spring Break will sit on their beaches, listening to their IPods, don’t
remember that day. They live in a world where there have always been Macs, Smart
phones (1997), and Siri giving directions is standard. Side note: Ever wonder
where the name Siri came from? The tech answer is Speech Interpretation and
Recognition Interface. The behind-the-scenes answer is one of the original
developers planned to name his first child Siri, which is a Norwegian name
meaning, “Beautiful woman who leads you to victory”. Siri, for all its ups and
downs since its release, is leading a generation into another level of
connection with the world.
I’m also thinking of the 2014 pre-schoolers who, as they watch their
live-stream video, recognize the gesture of sliding the finger across a touch
screen, but not the idea of a hand with thumb and pinkie extended being used as
a representation of the receiver on an old rotary phone. Movies can be viewed in
a car, not a theater. Books are digitally interactive and they can create their
own cartoon using the current software.
I have friends whose daughter is just 100 days old. By the time she is
a teen, Google glasses will be readily available, Transmedia storytelling will
be part of the mainstream culture, and schools will be connected through global
projects like those offered by Reboot Stories. Anything is
possible.
Hi-Tech in Service of Hi-Touch
I could wrap this up with comments about the pros and cons of our rapid
digital advancements. Such questions like: How do we balance between high-tech
and high-touch? How do we acclimate ourselves to all the changes? Can we? These
are all good questions and worthy of discussion and discovery. But to me, the
wonder in all of this is that on January 24, 1984, Apple released an ad
expressing their hope that we could break free of limited thinking. We humans,
through technology which is put in the hands of everyone, could create a better
world. I see this not as a salute to the technology itself, but to the
connections the technology can foster. How else could a young man in Chile text
his mother in Africa that he safe just as word of the earthquake hits the news
feeds? How else could we share stories in real time with people in different
countries and thus create more understanding? How else could we orchestrate
massive humanitarian aid to places in need? It is way harder to hate someone
when you realize that they are just as scared, just as confused, just as much
in awe of what being a human entails.
If the old adage is true: the inventions of science and technology are
at least 50 years ahead of what the public can accept, imagine what the next 30
will bring. This Wizard of Oz watching, transistor radio user is looking forward
to finding out. How about you?
in a Super Bowl ad. Up until that ad, I’d struggled under the mistaken belief
that the only computers available were room-sized machines made by IBM.
Spellbound, I watched as a lithe, mallet-wielding woman outraced
storm troopers into a room filled with blank-faced workers. The woman
heaved her mallet into the Big Brother on the screen and ended his spouting of
computer dogma. The picture faded to announce the launching of the Macintosh and
I realized I had just witnessed the launch of a new era in computers. The Mac
was the first mass-market personal computer with a mouse and graphical user
interface. The iconic ad ran only once on national television in its full
60-second length, and no matter where you fall on the Apple V. IBM V. Microsoft
debate, one thing we can all agree on is the last 30 years have brought
mind-boggling changes to our world.
As I write this, I’m sitting in the silence of the library – okay, not
complete silence as the other patrons are furiously tapping on their laptop
keyboards, the printer is spewing out tax forms, and the lilt of children’s
laughter drifts from the story hour cubicle as they watch a live-stream video.
I’m struck by the changes in technology I see around me. Instead of the
paper-card catalogue that was the hallmark of my high school library, I see one
monitor screen after another proclaiming, Welcome to the Digital Catalogue.
Instead of reading the hardback version that is available a few book stacks
away, I’m reading Steve Jobs’ biography on an IPad (apropos, I’m sure). The
chapter I’m reading includes a brief review of the history of the Silicon chip
-- from the development of transistors in the late ‘40s that morphed into the
semiconductor breakthroughs used in the personal computer of today. This
transistor is the same type as that in a transistor radio, the hallmark of the
Cool Crowd at Cocoa Beach where I grew up. The special few who could afford a
transistor radio, kept the volume high enough that the rest of us could hear the
DJ from the local teen station issue his every 15 minutes warning of, “Time to
turn, time to turn, so you won’t burn.” As a group, we’d all flip over to the
other side to keep our tans even. This was back before we knew getting a deep
Florida tan might lead to cancer. Now a skin cancer warning comes with every
tube of sunscreen slathered on arms and legs and the IPod has replaced the
transistor radio on that same beach.
Oz in Color, Oh My!
In college, the entire floor of my dorm all paused from studying for
finals to secretly watch the annual showing of the film Wizard of Oz. Our dorm
had a color console television, which was a rare commodity. As Dorothy stepped
into Oz and the film changed from sepia tone to full color, we all chanted the
line, “Toto, I've a feeling we’re not in Kansas anymore,” The shift to full
color was something most of us with our black and white TVs had never seen. We
all sat entranced as Dorothy travelled through a vibrant colored Oz. Afterwards,
we agreed it had been as spectacular as we had imagined and definitely worth any
razzing for watching, at the advanced age of 19, all 101 minutes of the film.
My first good-paying job was measuring the depth of the rut made by an
ion beam in the silicon chips being tested. I used an instrument that had just
been invented. When my brother, who’d thought about being a lawyer at age 13,
asked me why didn’t I major in this specialty in college, I replied, how could
I? The technology was only two years old and I’d been out of college for five.
IBM, or “Big Blue” was poised to dominate the Information Age.
Other technology changes I see in the library around me – a group of
teens are using the calculator in their phone to do their math homework. Gone
are the unwieldy brick-sized calculators that cost a whopping $100. Adults are
gathering tax return information from featherweight laptop computers, not
room-sized behemoths with magnetic tapes and punch card machines – and death to
the data entry clerk who dropped the stack of punch cards. Heck, even the
espresso machine in the coffee shop next door to the library is a third of the
size of the golden wonder that lured us all into the only café on the beach
strip.
30 Years Later
It’s been 30 years since the introduction of the Mac. These 2014 teens,
who at Spring Break will sit on their beaches, listening to their IPods, don’t
remember that day. They live in a world where there have always been Macs, Smart
phones (1997), and Siri giving directions is standard. Side note: Ever wonder
where the name Siri came from? The tech answer is Speech Interpretation and
Recognition Interface. The behind-the-scenes answer is one of the original
developers planned to name his first child Siri, which is a Norwegian name
meaning, “Beautiful woman who leads you to victory”. Siri, for all its ups and
downs since its release, is leading a generation into another level of
connection with the world.
I’m also thinking of the 2014 pre-schoolers who, as they watch their
live-stream video, recognize the gesture of sliding the finger across a touch
screen, but not the idea of a hand with thumb and pinkie extended being used as
a representation of the receiver on an old rotary phone. Movies can be viewed in
a car, not a theater. Books are digitally interactive and they can create their
own cartoon using the current software.
I have friends whose daughter is just 100 days old. By the time she is
a teen, Google glasses will be readily available, Transmedia storytelling will
be part of the mainstream culture, and schools will be connected through global
projects like those offered by Reboot Stories. Anything is
possible.
Hi-Tech in Service of Hi-Touch
I could wrap this up with comments about the pros and cons of our rapid
digital advancements. Such questions like: How do we balance between high-tech
and high-touch? How do we acclimate ourselves to all the changes? Can we? These
are all good questions and worthy of discussion and discovery. But to me, the
wonder in all of this is that on January 24, 1984, Apple released an ad
expressing their hope that we could break free of limited thinking. We humans,
through technology which is put in the hands of everyone, could create a better
world. I see this not as a salute to the technology itself, but to the
connections the technology can foster. How else could a young man in Chile text
his mother in Africa that he safe just as word of the earthquake hits the news
feeds? How else could we share stories in real time with people in different
countries and thus create more understanding? How else could we orchestrate
massive humanitarian aid to places in need? It is way harder to hate someone
when you realize that they are just as scared, just as confused, just as much
in awe of what being a human entails.
If the old adage is true: the inventions of science and technology are
at least 50 years ahead of what the public can accept, imagine what the next 30
will bring. This Wizard of Oz watching, transistor radio user is looking forward
to finding out. How about you?
