UNIVAC 1953, courtesy computerhistory.org
Originally uploaded by ritagoodbook
I was born when sci-fi movies were about computers taking over the world and putting millions of people out of jobs. They were the stuff of nightmares. You couldn’t fight a machine if it was smarter than you. It could work forever and not get tired or hungry or ask for a raise.
My dad’s cousin was an engineer on the UNIVAC project, which built one of the first computers, a room-sized behemoth that could maybe do what a pocket calculator or Dymo Labelmaker does today. People were deeply scared of it. The cousin, a brilliant, gentle man, became convinced that he was participating in a Manhattan Project of the mind, and he had a nervous breakdown. He left Sperry-Rand and started a chicken farm back home.
Then people realized technology is about making really good toys. Satellite tv and netflix. Pong, Galaga, and Tetris. Digital cameras at every family reunion, graduation, and wedding. Instant messages and ebay. Cars that tell you your brakes are bad, you’re in the wrong neighborhood, you’re listening to “You Sexy Thing” by Hot Chocolate, and, oh yeah, your door is ajar.
Technology serves us, not the other way round. I sometimes feel resentment at not being ready to learn about this year’s cool thing, but I’m not scared. And usually technology just lets me play better and connect to people better.
Technology let me tell this story in a blog and then find a picture to go with it, something I only dreamed about as we drove out to Cousin Harold’s henhouse in Dad’s rickety 1947 Studebaker.
A lot of what I do is try to make technology disappear, actually. If there’s a guest speaker, I want him to talk a bit, then press a button in his hand with the merest gesture, causing a pertinent image to come up behind him on a screen and illustrate his point perfectly. I DON’T want him to grope around, ask “is this thing on” and have a long delay while somebody figures out which connection didn’t happen and people start groaning. When students come to the library with no better game plan than “get on the computer” I want to make sure they learn something, not spend an hour getting sidetracked or having to pay for the 27 color pages they accidentally printed out.
Cousin Harold came to love technology again once it caught up with his genius. He gave up chickens in the late ’60s, built a radio station and some other things, then retired, and now he can laugh at MST3K on DVD in his RV with his grandkids.
My favorite technology? Audiobooks on my teeny little iPod. Storytelling with a digital camera handy so I can take–and share–pictures on the spot, doubling the smiles and giggles. Settling bets and remembering that actress–or that movie–with IMDB. Finding that forgotten song, the anthem of my entire youth, on iTunes. Taking a laptop deep in the woods and writing stories about my childhood.
Like this one. I guess I should text Harold and thank him for engineering humanity into this brave new world.
