Every person, every concept, everything has a past. Sometimes that past is thousands of years long, sometimes it's much, much shorter.
In the case of modern computing as we have it today, it's something like 70 years.
While this is an infinitesimal amount of time, the developments in computing have shaped the last 70 years, from the development of the transistor in 1947 to the web based applications and mobile services that have defined this decade. In today's world no one can escape the effects of computing, and in a unique way it has defined my family for the last three generations.
In 1968 my grandmother started a data entry company, contracting with companies to transfer documents to a computer readable medium. She sent my father and uncles to learn Fortran and COBOL (perhaps the first programming languages as we conceptualize them today) at age 12, in 1972. Thirty-two years later, I wrote my first program at the same age.
Programming has been our way of bridging the generations. Hearing stories of disks replacing tapes, the advent of the personal computer, the first time an operating system was mentioned has helped me understand my professional world, as well as my personal one. Understanding the things that my father and grandmother have not only lived through, but helped shape, has shaped me as a person as well as my family relationships.
We're all living through our own parts of history, and we all know many who have lived through previous bits. As we make those connections, from our lives to those prior, we will find - as I did - that life is simply more when we understand what and who came before. And that’s why we care about history.
Even when that history only stretches back a few short years. Or in this case 70, plus or minus a few.
That is so cool that programming can connect the generations in your family. It really is an extraordinary world, and a great community. Few people appreciate how great modern computers are today and they complain for such tiny issues. The world of computing 50 years ago would be all but incomprehensible to typical home desktop user of today. But, people don't even realize that they are standing on the shoulders of giants as they update their facebook status.
ReplyDeleteIt's interesting to think how technology has changed so drastically in recent years. Talking with some of the older folks, they can remember the first family car they had, the first airplane they rode in, the first time they watched the space shuttle take off, Armstrong walking on the moon, seeing cell phones and now smart phones. It blows my mind when I think how things change so quickly. It makes me wonder what we'll see.
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