A few bytes of geekiness

Last week there was a post doing the rounds on tumblr, "Reblog this if you're older than Google" which, according to the post, is 13, so I suppose I should reblog 3 times then!

But it got me thinking about how much IT we use and how things have changed.  My first computer was a sinclair XZ81 about the size of an ipad but with less juice than a pocket calculator never mind a basic mobile phone. To make it work you had to programme it (code it) - no nice easy already installed software, you want to use it? then write your own.  Programmes were stored on cassettes which produced lovely white noise if you got them confused with your mix tapes of music recorded from the radio (the first playlists of 'illegal' downloads) to make them work you started your programme by typing in CLOAD followed by the line numbers and then went away to make a cup of tea whilst the tape machine whirred away and the cursor on the black and white (or green and white if you had a 'proper' monitor instead of the portable TVs most people used) screen flickered away - which come to think of it isn't that dissimilar from turning on my office desktop, waiting for windows to open and to log onto the office server (currently running at 20 minutes... time for a tune up).  We spoke such strange things as "if, then, else" and "let x=x+1"  which totally bamboozled the maths teacher.  Then the BBC microcomputer arrived and now you could buy programmes but we still spoke in code only now it was BASIC and reasonably universal although I did manage to write one programme in two halves, one part for the graphics and one a series of education questions for primary pupils, in different 'modes' which even the IT dept at the local university couldn't marry up so my poor guinea pigs got the answers right (or wrong) but never saw the crying teddy bear or blasting off rocket.  BBCs were the first readily available machines which used a floppy disk storage system (the really big, truly floppy ones which melted if you left them on the windowsill in the sun - oops) and wouldn't have been able to store the plain text draft of this blog post never mind all the formatting and tags.  When we asked HB's children what was the picture on Word's save icon they hadn't a clue they just knew it was for saving what they'd done; they've never seen a floppy disk and once upon a not so long ago they were the greatest innovation.

When I first started at CJS we used put into the BUT section that people should be 'computerate' our abbreviation for computer literate.  It was quite rare; now we don't bother because it is simply assumed that everyone can use computers; now only certain, usually specialist, software is listed.  Likewise, the majority of people received CJS by post and a handful by fax (the time that a subscriber asked us to fax the 'list' the other way around "because the pages came out upside down" has gone down in CJS folklore) - no such thing as email.  Job ads came by post or fax and artwork as 'bromides' by registered delivery.  There was a general look of confusion when an agency asked it we could accept artwork as a PDF - a PF what? was the response.  We soon learnt.  And then the internet arrived in all its blocky technicolour million pages of (let's be honest) time wasting content - and that was before google (so more than 13 years ago then) when to find the right information was, shall we say, time consuming at the very least.  But it changed the world and made life different if not easier, if only so that we can transfer things from a computer on one side of a 12foot square office to another on the other side - that totally blew Niall's mind the first time we did it when the network cable literally broke.  Over the years we've become more tolerant of it's vagaries, when email was new and it stopped working it was met with disbelief now we just shrug our shoulders and say let me know if it's not there when it's back up.

I now think more easily at the end of my fingers via a keyboard than at the end of a pen but the office staff giggle at me signing and proofing documents with a fountain pen in hand!

On the flip side IT is ever present and can become an overwhelming presence.  Here at CJS we've found that email can be an annoyance, when you're working on a project or dealing with various tasks to have to keep breaking off to check, respond and reply to every email as it arrives interrupts the flow and distracts from the task in hand.  Thus, along with other companies we've instigated a new email policy; the email inbox is checked hourly and all correspondence is dealt with in one fell swoop, there is an autoresponder which lets emailers know and gives them the option of calling us if it's more urgent.  If you've sent us a message in the last month you may be aware of the new policy.  For the CJS Team it took a little getting used to, the urge to keep checking the inbox took a little while to simmer down but now we find that it's working well and we're generally more productive.

You can't escape IT either, it's infiltrated every corner of our lives. My Dad was a big Tomorrow's World fan and we sat down together to watch, one episode looked at the house of the future where as you put your canned goods into the cupboard the bar codes were scanned onto your database, they were scanned again as you took them out to use; thus your household inventory was always up to date, the presenters speculated that one day your cupboard could even order more food when there was none of a certain type left.  Tescos little scanning app is just about there.