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We Stand on the Shoulders of Giants
Oct. 6th, 2011 08:34 amI don't own an iPod or and Pad or Phone. I have even been known to refer to the "Cult of Apple".
So why was I teary this morning?
When I was 18 I had an IBM Selectric, it was brand new and the state of the art. Computers with less memory than all but the lowest end cell phones were almost the size of New York City apartment and had to be kept chilled like a good gin and tonic. Today I joke about the 5 computers in my house (actually it's 4 now because I gave one to my mother).
When I began college all of the science geeks I knew were majoring in computer science and that wasn't something I gave much thought to because I still thought of computers as those big metal boxes in chilly rooms. The first personal computer I ever set my fingers on was an Apple. I learned how to use the Bank Street Writer shortly before dropping out of college. Personal Computers were much too expensive for (almost) everyone I knew, certainly everyone in my old neighborhood. Most of us went to Radio Shack to buy batteries, if we ever went at all; we weren't interested in buying home computers (kits or pre built).
At that time, computers were something that were used in business by end users who were wary of the technology: It was complicated, unfamiliar and many were afraid that it could make their jobs, and them, obsolete. Few people I knew had any interest in having a computer in their homes until early to mid 90s when computer ownership began to build towards a critical mass.
Slowly, that began to change. Today home computer ownership hovers around the 80th percentile. There are many others who connect to the Internet through smart phones, tablets and other small devices. Apple was the fulcrum, they began to disseminate the idea that having a computer in your home office, kitchen, or bedroom could be as normal as having a book or pad and pencil. Apple began by donating computers to schools and ended up by changed the perception of computers as futuristic threat to computer as ubiquitous home media appliance.
You can make a valid argument for Microsoft being the company that made computers mass media by dint of the sheer numbers of computers they shipped. But every revolution (and yes, what we have lived through in the past decades will be considered nothing less than one of the great revolutions in human history) has at its beginning an idea and a person who can create a vision that others follow. A famous Communications theorist, Ev Rogers, would say that every revolution has an innovator to begin the stone rolling down hill.
I spend my academic life studying how the Internet affects how we connect with each other and form communities. It is my passion and anyone who knows me F2F knows that I can talk about it endlessly.
The man who gave that stone its first push not only helped to sculpt the terrain society treads on today , it is one of the standards by which we measure the wealth and development of countries, computer ownership and Internet access. But more that that, on a highly personal level, he helped changed the course of my life.
Thank you and rest in pace.
So why was I teary this morning?
When I was 18 I had an IBM Selectric, it was brand new and the state of the art. Computers with less memory than all but the lowest end cell phones were almost the size of New York City apartment and had to be kept chilled like a good gin and tonic. Today I joke about the 5 computers in my house (actually it's 4 now because I gave one to my mother).
When I began college all of the science geeks I knew were majoring in computer science and that wasn't something I gave much thought to because I still thought of computers as those big metal boxes in chilly rooms. The first personal computer I ever set my fingers on was an Apple. I learned how to use the Bank Street Writer shortly before dropping out of college. Personal Computers were much too expensive for (almost) everyone I knew, certainly everyone in my old neighborhood. Most of us went to Radio Shack to buy batteries, if we ever went at all; we weren't interested in buying home computers (kits or pre built).
At that time, computers were something that were used in business by end users who were wary of the technology: It was complicated, unfamiliar and many were afraid that it could make their jobs, and them, obsolete. Few people I knew had any interest in having a computer in their homes until early to mid 90s when computer ownership began to build towards a critical mass.
Slowly, that began to change. Today home computer ownership hovers around the 80th percentile. There are many others who connect to the Internet through smart phones, tablets and other small devices. Apple was the fulcrum, they began to disseminate the idea that having a computer in your home office, kitchen, or bedroom could be as normal as having a book or pad and pencil. Apple began by donating computers to schools and ended up by changed the perception of computers as futuristic threat to computer as ubiquitous home media appliance.
You can make a valid argument for Microsoft being the company that made computers mass media by dint of the sheer numbers of computers they shipped. But every revolution (and yes, what we have lived through in the past decades will be considered nothing less than one of the great revolutions in human history) has at its beginning an idea and a person who can create a vision that others follow. A famous Communications theorist, Ev Rogers, would say that every revolution has an innovator to begin the stone rolling down hill.
I spend my academic life studying how the Internet affects how we connect with each other and form communities. It is my passion and anyone who knows me F2F knows that I can talk about it endlessly.
The man who gave that stone its first push not only helped to sculpt the terrain society treads on today , it is one of the standards by which we measure the wealth and development of countries, computer ownership and Internet access. But more that that, on a highly personal level, he helped changed the course of my life.
Thank you and rest in pace.
