My Computer Journey's and Beyond

My Computer Journey's and Beyond

In the mid nineteen seventies, just out of high school, I bought my first word processor, at the time it was in the form of a typewriter. There were computers at the time unfortunately, most were so expensive the common person was unable to afford one, and I was nothing if not common.

I remember that was when my fascination with computers began. It was my IBM word processor typewriter that I built my first resume, which in turn helped me win my first position and sent me on my way to being self-sufficient. I had jobs before but not what I would call an adult job.

My first job when I was only sixteen was working at the gift shop at the airport. Oddly enough, as a young person several of my jobs were working at the airport, snack bar, restaurant, gift shop again and then with a short break working at a drive-in movie theater (only the coolest job ever), then back to the airport working for the parking company in various positions from booth cashier all the way up to manager over all lots and cashiers. That was when I decided it was time to explore a more career type of move.

My little IBM typewriter helped me write a winning resume to obtain my first, adult position and I loved it for the effort. My first adult job was business secretary and assistant manager of a major tire store, something I knew ab-so-lutly nothing about. The only thing I knew about tires; was they were holding my car up off the ground, oh-yeah, and moved it down the road to get me to my new job. Good thing I was a quick learner, the first week I was there I was, left in the store alone with no one to fall back on when my very first customer came in to buy a full set of tires for his 4 x 4 pickup truck. Yeah, he was a real redneck. Lucky for me he liked bragging on how much he knew about, well, pretty much everything, according to him. The good thing about this is he told me exactly what size tires he needed and what brand he thought were best for his truck. So, that is exactly what I gave him. My boss was ecstatic, once he recovered from the fact that the only woman working in the store just sold a set of four truck tires of all things, all by her

little lonesome. I was with that job for six torturous months until the testosterone level in the place went to a record high. So, I moved on.

It was in nineteen seventy-eight that I was doing a bit of window shopping, that I saw a small store where a crowd of people were packed into the small space. Everyone was watching what from the outside looking in, appeared to be a movie on a detached, computer screen (unheard of at the time). Entering the store, I finally made my way through the crush of viewers, what I saw was enthralling. It was an Apple 1 Computer. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing, there was a separate computer, transmitting images to an unusually large screen.

The images were in bright colors, birds were flying, fish swimming and animals of all kinds moving around on the screen. That was the first time I had ever heard of, let alone seen a personal computer that could send color or moving images. I was shocked and

amazed. I wanted one. Wah, until I saw the price tag. There was no way I could afford the asking price.

The late sixties and during the seventies may have been the time of hippies and free love, however, that was about the only thing you could get for free.

I had started working at an ammunition factory doing pretty much the same thing as at the tire store for more pay and still didn’t make anywhere near what I would need for the Apple 1 PC even if I saved up until it was available to the public in the next year, or

two.

I was given a HP (Hewlett-Packard) PC by a friend; it was a dual external drive model with two floppy drives, which were a pain in the rear and ran a DOS (Disk Operating System) with an eight-inch monitor (considered large at the time), and something new called a Qwerty keyboard. Keep in mind that PCs at this time did not have internal drives and certainly not hard drives; they came with the

operating system on a five-inch floppy disk, and the other five-inch floppy disk drive was for whatever program you wanted to run at the time that came on a five-inch floppy disk, which of course you would have to buy separately. If you wanted to copy your work to save you had to remove the program disk and input another of the five-inch pre-formatted floppy disks and save it. There were very few basic programs in the beginning but soon there were scores of computing software, which led to bookkeeping software and word processing software, creative writing software and other subjects like sciences, horoscope design and on it went.

It was the discovery of the GUI that was really the beginning of the Personal Computer. After Apple and Microsoft fought it out in offices and with the consumer other lesser-known companies entered the race to see who could build the fastest most powerful

computer that offered the most storage per price point. These are the personal computers that I for one would be hard pressed to live without today in the twenty-first century.

Computers had been around since before I was born, it took years after the first breakthrough of the UNIX operating system, then IBM’ development of the floppy disk and Magnavox’s development of the first home gaming consol. With Xerox’ invention in nineteen seventy-three of the Ethernet system for connecting multiple

computers, originally designed for commercial systems. Somehow, it all came together to design the first Personal Computing System. In the late seventies DOS did little more than its predecessor, the Analog Computer, which was primarily for computations and then only in the larger business offices, the difference was when HP (Hewlett Packard) began focusing more on word processing

with the added analog computing together.

 Most jobs I had through the years prior to receiving my first actual PC gave me a basic understanding of what I thought they were capable of. At the beginning of the Twenty-First Century, Two Thousand and twenty-two I was fortunate to have been employed by both the Apple Computer Company as well as the Dell Computer

Company, a dream come true for me. Now, I see the computer industry has taken on a life of its own.

Who knows what the future will bring, computers now can make things with the help of 3D printing machines, including medical implants, fashion design and manufacturing, even food stuff, like hamburgers. Right now, 3D technology has moved into a large

part of our lives; Entertainment, Healthcare, Manufacturing, Education, Virtual Reality and by Twenty-Thirty, Augmented Reality will be involved in our everyday lives through smarter smart phones, smart watches, and glasses that can read your mind and/or body language without us even uttering a single word.

As these new technologies transcend the boundaries of our imagination, maybe we should ask ourselves; is the speed in which we are moving forward a natural pace, are we ready for the next step, anatomic robots to do anything and everything that a real person can do, a computer locked into our every thought just by wearing a pin on your shirt, a pair of sunglasses or a phone implanted under your skin. Is this really something we, as battling entities, are ready for? 

If all these things can happen within the earth’s gravitational pull what might be possible outside of it?

Can anyone say, “Beam me up Scotty?".

Maybe, say to a 3D synthesizer, "Earl Grey, Hot." and get a steaming mug of hot tea?