The Evolution of a Post Technological Society

We take technology in our daily lives for granted. At my age I remember the more primitive pre-high tech times. Believe it or not we did not always have the internet or cell phones. I remember not that many years ago when there were no fax machines, high tech businesses used a teletype to send and receive text. it was always on yellow paper (who decided that the paper had to be yellow, we may never know). The really cool thing was for an outgoing message the machine used to punch the message on this 1" wide or so yellow paper tape that the machine could use to send the data over the phone lines. Well anyways there was this container that collected these very small round pieces of paper that was punched out. They made absolutely awesome confetti for use on New Years or whenever.


Telephones: were connected by a coiled wire, and actually had a dial, all the dials made this certain sound when dialing that was very cool. The longest cord was generally 25" long so basically you were stuck to be within 25" of where it was connected. At least the phones worked when the power went out. In the 70's we moved to the mountains in California, and we actually had a 6 person party line, everyone’s ring sounded a little different. Everyone used the honor system not to listen in on your neighbor’s phone calls, Hmmmmm. right.

Computers: My first PC at home was a Commodore Vic 20 It did not have a hard drive and connected to a television. You had to store your programs on a cassette tape. It used to take me about an hour and a half to program in the code for a pong like game that you could move the bars on the screen to deflect a bouncing ball (all in monochrome green I might add). If you made on mistake in the programming it took a very long time for me to de-bug it as I was not now or ever was a programmer. My first real PC was a 4 mhz, 8088 processor machine. I had this very cool amber monochrome monitor at the time instead of the usual monochrome green one. Then I got this multiplier board that increased the speed to 16 mhz, I thought it was lightning fast, I was really styling now. The 5-1/2 inch floppy disks were cumbersome and susceptible to data loss. Mind you this was pre-Windows days and DOS ruled. I remember it has a fairly large hard drive and could hold like 2 megabytes of data (My digital camera I use now, each image is larger then 5 megs). I remember at the time that IBM came out with a 20 megabyte hard drive and it was like $10,000.00 or something like that.

BBS Systems: We didn't have access to the crude precursor that was to become the internet, it was strictly for the U.S. Govt. and selected universities it was supposed to be for secure data transfer during the cold war. We didn’t know about it at the time anyway. What we did have was the BBS (Bulletin Board Services) system and the individuals who ran them were called Sysops. basically it was software that you ran on your own computer and people could call in and play games, download files or pics or whatever. A lot of BBS sites charged a subscription fee, although there were a lot of free BBS sites as well. I remember this really cool BBS game called "Trade Wars" I used to play on one particular BBS site. You did not have web sites to go to you had telephone numbers of BBS sites. I called into the BBS sites on my blinding fast 300 baud modem (yes 300 baud). Eventually I moved up to 600 baud, then 900 baud and then to 1,200 baud. Wow!! those were the days. I don't miss the BBS's or the slow speeds, I am kind of nostalgic for "Trade Wars" though I never did get to master that game. The Internet killed the BBS system, and the BBS systems are now just a faded memory.

Cell phones, GPS, High speed computers, The Internet: These new technologies were described in various fashion in science fiction books from the 50's through the early 1980's. This is now reality and everyday items that we take for granted. Although I remember in the early 1980's my boss got one of those huge car phones, and it cost $2.50 per minute for the honor or status of using it. When he was on the road those were the worlds shortest conversations, He was always cheap anyway. The only people you saw talking on the phone in cars were obviously business executives, now everyone seems to need to talk while their driving, all the time. Go figure, I guess we must all be terribly important now days.

The most amazing transformation that has occurred is when we suddenly lose all our technology, such as during or after a large storm or power outage everything comes to a screeching halt. We can't conduct business, we can't communicate, and we have a feeling of isolation. You can't even buy anything at the store. Hell, here in Florida when you lose power in the summer and the air conditioning goes out we think we are going to die from the heat. I can't imagine how it was before there was air conditioning, there must have been people dying in the streets from the oppressive heat. This blog would not be possible without amazing technology. An interesting tidbit I read the other day is: The internets main servers is estimated to consume approximately 2.5% of the entire United Stated electrical generating capacity, or more energy consumed then the entire State of Mississippi in one year. The estimated electrical cost in dollars is $25,000,000.00 per year.

Technology we can't live with it, and we can't live without it. I'm sure that there are many more examples of primitive technologies which have evolved over time which I haven't covered.

Anyone with anything to add please feel free to do so.

Tom