THE OFFICIAL BLOG OF THE SBS DIVA

One thing a bit unique in the technology industry is how soon you are out of date.  In using this Memorial day weekend to do some clean up of the house I was going through old computer books and found all my old MCSE books for the Windows 2000 era exams.  In another old dusty box I found some old software that included copies from a long gone laptop that obviously ran Windows 95.  Now before the blog audience starts waxing poetic about how great the good old days were, I think we tend to gloss over the fact that this industry is a realtively young industry and constant learning is part of the process. 

Flipping though an old TV show tonight, Dragnet 1968 started off with Joe Friday touting how technologically advanced Los Angeles was with their computer systems.  The computer system showcased in the TV show was the cutting edge technology of punched cards and magnetic tape. 

A similar show online features new fangled technology circa 1967:

http://www.imdb.com/video/hulu/vi775226137/

And now days you can watch that program ON a computer.

Data punched into punch cards (and if you made a single error or had any hanging chads your program screwed up)

Magnetic tape was used back then to store data

The high speed printer used to print out the result of your computer programs (no on screen results).

When you think about how much technology has changed, how much we've had to change, it's kinda funny how much we resist change now.

Bill Gannon: "Maybe computers eventually will put everyone out of work"....

Mr. Peterson:  "No, sir.  There will always be work for people who build and design them, and those who run maintenance on them, and of course those who feed information into them."

Joe Friday: "And as long as there are people who can get rich by not feeding the information into them...."

Mr. Peterson:  "Yes?"

Joe Friday:  "...We'll never be out of work"

Cue music...Duh duh da duh.

The bad guys in technology are still in business aren't they?