I need somebody who is atleast 53 years old to tell me what changes you personaaly have seen in technology in your life. It is for school so be honest!
Technology changes?
There were no computers when I went to school or college.
When I was %26quot;THE BOSS%26quot;, there was no internet.
But I was born when the JETS were born. (In fact, in Dayton at Wright Patterson AFB where the jets were born). We walked on the moon when I was a teen. YES, I watched most of the Star Trek series in it's first run. (But missed a number of episodes).
I bought my first computer with my brother in '78. We got our first computer jobs when there was no school for it. I networked computers for the first time in 1980. I saw megabit communication in 1981. I worked on ethernet protocols in 1983.
I almost had the opportunity to meet Bill Gates when he was a nobody, back in 1978. While I knew who he was, I thought that Microsoft and that group were scoundrels. I did ask Paul Allen if they had plans to create Microsoft Basic for my computer. He replied... %26quot;If you know alot of people that would buy it%26quot;. I said %26quot;NO, but I would%26quot;. Eventually, my computer did come out with a version of Basic, and I was happy. I did not deal with Microsoft until about 1981. I started to like them then.
In 1986, I worked on a project where we had a 6GB drive. The salesman thought we were NUTS, but we filled it after just 20 minutes of testing. We had no idea that 400 GB hard drives would be possible.
Here are the hard drives that I have used on my primary computer.
20MB, 170MB, 2GB, 20GB, 80GB
I personally own 18 working computers at this moment. Who would have guessed. 4 of these are turned on at this moment.
I helped increase the production of Q-Tips by making the inspection system much faster and more accurate.
I worked on a number of aircraft related projects and saw %26quot;Fly By Wire%26quot; early on. I have seen radar systems that looked like Video. WHOA, am I allowed to say that?
The internet is cool, but it has greatly expanded the risks to our privacy and security. Do not let the internet fool you. It is UN-SECURE!
From an ecology point of view, I've seen this:
- Los Angeles, Denver and New York air pollution reduced significantly.
- When I was young, Lake Erie looked like a dead lake, with dead fish everywhere. It's better now.
- I have owned cars that got about ten miles per gallon. My current car gets 30. I am impressed with the Toyota Primus that gets 50. (Although, they gotta do something about lowering the price so everyone buys it.) YES, I waited in line to buy gas during the Jimmy Carter years.
From a polital point of view:
More communication is not necessarilly better. The U.N. is totally disrespected and undeservingly. If we don't have a place to talk, there will be more war.
High techology does not mean that we can GET the bad guys. It does not mean that we can stop terrorism. We should be using diplomacy to engage the terrorism in talk.
Technology changes?
My mother is 53 years old and she's totally intimidated by Computers and the Internet. She can't even use the VCD player until we taught her how to do so.
Sorry, I'm only ten!!!!
When I was born, most of the people in the world did not have electricity. In the United States, some communities did not get electricity, especially in rural areas, until the 1950's. When I was young, %26quot;hi-tech%26quot; meant slide rules (a manual calulator) and early transistors. Children learned how to put simple radios together and about how they worked. I lived in the artic then and everyone was very excited about a breakthrough motor oil that wouldn't freeze as easily as the old kind. That change meant greater freedom in world travel, and less expensive world travel because we could then fly higher and across the north pole, which is shorter. President Kennedy told us to learn math and science for the future of this nation, to help put a man on the moon. And, we did. Families listened to the radio, and, when television started, everything changed. My vision is very poor and I compensate with increased hearing and perception of the world around me. I remember when television came to my village. I was in school and I heard a relaxed but vivacious and bright quality in everyone at the school. But, in less than one week after television began, I heard a very different quality in everyone at the school. Everyone was much duller in enthusiam and tone of voice, less busy and more internalized. That quality, though, may have been due to sleep deprivation because everyone was staying up all night watching their new televisions. But, something definately changed in us by viewing television so passively. I never saw television myself until we were able to get a color set. I very seldom had television for my children.They basically grew up without it. They turned out splendidly. But, jokingly, my son who is an attorney teased me about the exclusion of most common appliances and technologies, including television, from his childhood. Then he says he should sue me for %26quot;Technologically Imparing%26quot; him. He got caught up in no time, though, after he left for college. Remember something. You grew up with television. You have seen it all your life. But, it was very different to be six years old or sixteen or sixty and see that machine for the first time. It was a shock, like an earthquake and electricity combined jolting through you. We were amazed. It was so DIFFERENT. It glowed incredibly beautifully in bold colors that looked like dreamy Candyland. Even when the reception from the antenna was fuzzy, we kept watching because it was fascinating and from another a world . . .a real signal, not like in the comic books and science fiction, but a real manmade signal that was beaming through the air. Back then, people thought a lot about how television could beam through the air. And, what ARE radio waves. or microwaves . . .or gamma rays? We got into the electromagnetic spectrum. We even watched the dot of light grow smaller and smaller into infinity when you turned the set off. There was something wonderful and, yet, disturbingly addictive about that glowing machine. The first thing I ever saw on television was the opening credits of Walt Disney when Tinkerbell sails with a wake of shimmering pixy dust across the Magic Mountian. That scene, that moment in my life, was one of the PRETTIEST things I've ever experienced. Then came a barrage of new stuff, each one like from a James Bond movie . . .stereos, dishwashers, portable radios, satellites, nuclear submarines, nuclear bombs, copy machines, Polaroids, breaking the speed of sound, lasers, DNA, antibiotics, air-conditioning, frozen foods, 8-track tapes, credit cards, safty breaks, hand calculators, microwave ovens, automatic tellers, computers, and so on. All that new technology came at us, though, pretty much one at a time. But, for the last ten years or so, new stuff seems to be coming at us in swarms or waves. It's amazing how exponentially more rapidly we are making new technology, and how exponentially more rapidly we are being introduced to new technology. Personally, I think one of the most amazing tecnological advances of all was the electron microscope.
