Think. Small

In 1956 IBM introduced the first hard drive. The 305 RAMAC allowed the computer to store data digitally. It weighed a ton (literally) and could store slightly less than 5MB of information. Thumb-sized USB drives will now contain a thousand times more data and are so common place they are often given away as corporate gifts and promotional items.

I may have missed the first shipments of RAMAC, but I vividly remember the first time a PC was delivered to an advertising agency, Brown Christensen, where I worked as a production assistant in 1983. It was a momentous occasion. Only one person in the company knew how to use it - Ross Jackson, then a young suit. He was quite impressed with himself. I recall him explaining that it had a Winchester hard drive. Fair enough, I though, the West was won with Winchesters, how could I fail to be impressed?

What didn't impress me was the arcane strings of code that were required to access and sort of function. Thankfully the Apple Macintosh came along the following year.

While I was working at BC (which was subesequently bought by DDB - then bought back by BC - then sold to and ruined by McCann Erickson), we held the account for Panasonic and Technics brands, which were distributed by Fisher & Paykel. One day a fax machine arrived - via our client's tech connections. It was placed in the telex room. That's right, the firm had a complete room dedicated to sending telexes. Secretaries would remian after hours to communicate with principles in Tokyo or New York. Within a year the telex was gone and the replacement fax was roughly half the size of its predecessor and had actually begun to receive messages, where previously there were few and came far between - no one in our local realm had a fax (which illustrated Metcalf's Law rather well).

Via TechCrunch top 25 days in computing history.

You might be interested in the Times Online archive - which reproduces the actual pages from microfiche (remember them).

Comments

Ze Frank thinks so you don't have to

Ze Frank appeared on my radar when I saw his presentation among the excellent TED Talks videos . This morning I was reading Russell Davies planning blog in which he referred to a clip by Ze Frank - Where do ideas come from. Here's the transcript: "...Hungry Hippo licks Aunt JEmima [sic] writes, "Are you ever gonna break into song again? Are you running out of ideas?" Hungry Hippo licks Aunt JEmima, that's a good question. I run out of ideas every day! Each day I live in mortal fear that I've used up the last idea that'll ever come to me. If you don't wanna run out of ideas the best thing to do is not to execute them. You can tell yourself that you don't have the time or resources to do 'em right. Then they stay around in your head like brain crack. No matter how bad things get, at least you have those good ideas that you'll get to later. Some people get addicted to that brain crack. And the longer they wait, the more they convince themse...

Johnny Bunko competiton

The Great Johnny Bunko Challenge from DHP on Vimeo . There's a young chap in Indiana, one Alec Quig , who has written to me about creating a career based on a polymathic degree, from which he has recently graduated. He's an interesting young man and his concerns about going forward in life are the anxieties we all face at crossroads in our lives when we are forced to make choices. Dan Pink's latest book The Adventures of Johnny Bunko: The Last Career Guide You'll Ever Need might help: "From a New York Times, BusinessWeek, and Washington Post bestselling author comes a first-of-its- kind career guide for a new generation of job seekers.There's never been a career guide like it.the fully illustrated story (ingeniously told in Manga form) of a young Everyman just out of college who lands his first job. Johnny Bunko is new to parachute company Boggs Corp., and he stumbles through his early days as a working stiff until a crisis prompts him to find a new job. St...

Why billboards must go.

The problem with billboards and advertising in public places is they are an invasion of privacy. Unlike magazine, tv, radio (etc) advertising you cannot choose to turn it off or avoid it. Nor does it offer anything in return. It is a medium that offers no benefit or advantage to the person it is inflicted on. At least television ads subsidise the programming. Without doubt some billboards are entertaining - I thought the anti GE poster for short lived MADGE activist group was particularly good. But most are rubbish. Literally. Badly executed. Nothing important to say. The debate has led to a great deal of hysteria - mostly from people with a vested interest in perpetuating the deployment of hoardings. Perhaps the idea that the issue at stake is 'property rights' is the creepiest. If you own a building you have every right to plaster anything you like on its external surfaces. Is that an antisocial point of view? I think so. In the UK you could have an ASBO slapped on you for si...

ThoughtSpurs

Search This Blog

Think. Small

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Ze Frank thinks so you don't have to

Johnny Bunko competiton

Why billboards must go.