The Ancient History Of High Technology

We have a distinct sense of history in this age of accelerated temporal chronology,. Traditionally, the term “ancient” used to refer to prehistoric civilizations such as Mesopotamia and Sumeria who bartered to procure commodities, but in these days of e-commerce, the classical period is the last 20 years of the previous Century.

The great watershed of computing saw the introduction of DOS in the early 1980s. Originally authored by Seattle Computer Products, it was called QDOS which stood for quick and dirty operating system. The chief architect and author was a young guy named Tim Paterson. We can call this period the Aechulean (stone) age of personal computing. Computers were soldered together by nerdy high school students and programmed by college geeks who never went to class. The two Steves started Apple Computers in a garage. Atari released Asteroids. In 1982, Disney released TRON, which is the film John Lasseter says got him interested in computer animation. John, of course, went on to run Pixar and is now studio head at Disney.

It was also the year Adobe Systems was founded by John Warnock and Charles Geschke. They introduced PostScript, which basically put a printer in every home. Adobe, of course, went on to acquire and distribute some popular application programs such as Photoshop. It was created by Thomas Knoll, while he was at college, and his brother John, who worked at ILM (Industrial Light and Magic). Years later, John was nominated for Academy Awards for his special effects work on movies such as Star Wars and Star Trek. He won an Oscar for his work on Pirates of the Caribbean.

This brings us to the “temporal” (ATC) equivalent of the “Industrial Revolution” by which we compress approximately 4,000 years into eight. That’s what I mean by “accelerated” chronology. In this, our third decade of the  electronic interface, the ‘80s have now become truly ancient. Contemporary generations have no idea what a vinyl LP is or a rotary phone or vector display, for that matter. A lot of people don’t buy CD-ROM games anymore either – they are a categorical, temporal equivalent of “Victorian.”

I was at the roll-out of Spaceship Warlock in San Francisco in 1991. Two years later, MYST came out. Both games were originally authored for Apple computers only and were “ported” to the Windows platform. This produced compatibility problems, because the PC environment was far more open to developers and authors, which is also the reason why it is far more open to hackers, crackers and thieves who send out viruses, steal credit card information and sometimes identities.

This brings us to the contemporary  age where cash is no longer preferred in commerce. Virtually untraceable, cash contributes to the underground economy. It is considered “underground,” because it is possible for transactions to go institutionally unreported.

If you try to buy a product at a high tech outlet, do not attempt to use cash. You will be relegated to the ignominious fringe of shame and humiliation. Perhaps the concept of cash should go away so we can return to bartering for commodities instead of using electronic equivalents of accumulated wealth. It might eliminate the motivation of the highwaymen who run our financial institutions.