IT peeps, be warned: You'll soon be a museum exhibit Telephone operator, please put me through to… What's that? You want me to address you by your first name? Well, that's jolly friendly. I'm (thinks quickly, decides to use Starbucks name) "Alex". And how should I call you? Right. Alexa, please put me through to… Yes, I said "put me though". You don't understand the question? It …
" So many people live without riding the whirlwind of a revolution (technological,inustrial etc), and we have watched it from youth and will watch it to maturity."
An elderly neighbour born in 1914 lived until she was 99. She remembered the excitement of primitive aircraft flying overhead. Broadcast radio was also a new invention when she was a child. Electricity gradually replaced gas lighting in the home.
She learned to drive a car when you didn't need a licence - or at least there was no driving test. Someone's autobiography describes their father buying a car on a visit to London. The showroom mechanic took him for a short drive to teach him the principles. The man then drove home. He arrived with both running boards attached by rope - the result of several mishaps en route.
She learned to drive a car when you didn't need a licence - or at least there was no driving test.
My wifes grandfather got his driving license at 15 during WW1. The local doctor needed a driver and all the able-bodied men were away or doing Important Stuff[1]
His test consisted of the local constable watching him drive round the town square.
[1] This being Cornwall, Important Stuff == mining, fishing or farming. Because he was a nice middle-class lad (his father owned a shop), he didn't qualify for any of those.
my career of wrangling robots has to do is last 7 more years and I'm home free
However all you people looking back with misty eyed nolstalgia at the '60s, '70s '80s and thinking how much better it was.. it wasn't....... IT back then was crap, how many of us learned assembly code because the langauges of the time ran slower than a dead slug stuck in treacle
Oh exciting shiny computer time... with a screen res of 256/192 .. sheesh thats less than a desktop icon today.. lets get 1 black blob to hit another black blob, get the computer to make a buzzing noise and call it space trek or something.
I learned my trade on hand controlled machinery, lathes and mills etc, as soon as I found out someone had attatched a computer to one and got the computer to do all the work I was out of the hand twirling nonsense and off into robot land where I could sit in a nice warm office telling the robots what to do and not stuck on an oily smelly factory floor getting covered in shite (at least that was the plan... it hasn't quite worked out like that)
Technology changes all the time.... bet theres still some cavemen complaining about this new fangled thing call 'fire' and how it was better in the old days before we had it
"[...] IT back then was crap, [...]"
It was subjectively exciting. The dopamine rush on achieving the "impossible" is a universal human reward.
What many of us youngsters didn't realise was that we were often pioneers. If our boss gave us a job to do - we would ask how to do it. To which the effective answer was that no one had done it before - so you'll have to work it out for yourself.
Being in computer development allowed plenty of scope for treating the latest massive mainframe as your personal toy. Wow! - a whole 1MB of store.
As technical support we bridged the gap between the System/Application programmers and the hardware engineers. We knew our way round both silos. That depth of experience gave us an uncommon grasp of how IT works at all levels.
I can still get that rush from an Arduino project - needing similar skills to my early mainframes and my prior teenage radio/electronics hobby.
I also get that same high when sculpting human likenesses in clay. There is a lot of similarity in the ups and downs of both creative projects - except you can't checkpoint clay against disasters as you progress. A colleague once remarked that I write software like someone modelling in clay - probably what is called DevOps nowadays.
how many of us learned assembly code because the langauges (sic) of the time ran slower than a dead slug stuck in treacle
Yep. Even as an amateur coder in the 80s I needed to use 6502 Assembler to make stuff work reasonably well. And that included rewriting some educational software that had cost real money, but that was written in BBC Basic, to make it more usable.
Coopers still exist, up here in Scotland anyway. The Water of Life is still, by law, matured in wooden barrels for at least 3 years in Scotland in order to be called Scotch Whisky. That means we need people who can for eg put knocked down barrels imported from the US bourbon houses back together again. To replace a stave, refit a heated hoop.
Being a thrifty nation little whisky (note the spelling) is matured in new wood. For people who make wooden barrels from scratch you need the US where the law says the whiskey (sp) must be matured in new wood. A law noted by Scotch Whisky producers. Grants, who make Glenfiddich, own an oak forest in the Ozarks, they rent the barrels to the bourbon houses then import them impregnated with bourbon.
I'm a part time woodworker and I'm just about tooled up to make a barrel. I could use a compass plane but wooden coopering planes are cheaper and still around. I have matched pairs of tongue and groove wooden planes. Much more pleasant work than feeding wood into a wirring, roaring machine you have to wear ear defenders for.
The Water of Life is still, by law, matured in wooden barrels
Same applies for other 'traditional' spirits (Calvados et. al.). I've no idea if it hold for the abomination[1] that they drink in the US though..
[1] They call it "sippin' whiskey" cos only a fool takes more than a sip before moving on to proper whisky made from malted barley..
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