Are We Headed For A Digital Age?

[Captain Caveman]

I did a thread like this on one of my first message boards as an adult. Do you think that since technology is such a big part of our lives and is basically taking over the world that eventually everything will be digital?

Yes.

 

[Sherlock Holmes]

Like everything being computerized and automatic.

Well computers are getting cheaper, more powerful and more pervasive but that's arguably been the case since the first microprocessor in 1971, but really goes back years before truth be told.

My life first began to get "digital" around 1977, when I purchased an early microcomputer kit, this one - I was 18 in Liverpool, UK and Star Wars had just come out.

A year before that I began to program stuff, using this an early programmable calculator (sometimes called an "electronic slide rule" back then). Electronics has quite a lot of mathematics in it and being able to do quite involved calculations with this calculator was an exciting experience.

This is when I had immense respect and admiration for the United States, I was enthralled by technology and the Apollo moon project and studied electronics for two years full time and had magazine articles published. The US was an immense magnet to me, an inspiration and I dreamed of living there and being a part of the technology revolution.

Many of my heroes were engineers like Seymour Cray, Edison, Armstrong, Babbage, Tesla, Noyce and others, there was immense optimism, drive, innovation.

Sadly - now that I'm 65 - watching the news has become increasingly depressing, with fools running the country and utter clowns like RFK just getting confirmed, the admiration I once had has faded and the optimism and drive has all but gone.

Still they were fun days and I have great memories and can at least retreat into my workshop/lab as the country deteriorates.

 

[Sherlock Holmes]