I've been thinking as to where technology has been over the time that I've been out of college, and it made me a bit reminiscent. Since I graduated from high school almost ten years ago, things have changed a hell of a lot in this field. So I decided to compile a bit of a “Shanafelt Technology History” to get all you newbies up to speed.
1, Christmas 1993 - I get my first 486 IBM computer my senior year in high school. This is the first I’ve dealt with something other than a MAC and it was a welcome change. Two things I remember in particular:
My aunt buying my first football game “Front-Page Sports Football”. An absolutely excellent game as far as game play, even when compared to today’s standards. I spend countless hours playing it and printing out rosters for draft’s. Finally win the cup. Introduced to AOL somehow (can’t remember how). My friends come over and we start playing around in the chat rooms. This experience was short-lived however when my dad realized I was making long distance phone calls to Altoona and racked up a $73 phone bill. Had to pay for the bill
2, Freshman Year, Westminster College, Fall 1994 – Introduced to the concept of email. Was amazed that I could send a message to the next room and it gets there faster than I could walk. The web follows shortly thereafter. Can remember thinking there wasn’t much to do on it at the time, but there was potential. Considered registering trademark domain names such as Ford.com, etc… so that those companies would have to pay me big bucks for the rights to those names if this Web thing ever took off. Was too lazy to figure out what steps I would have to take to do such a thing, so I didn’t bother. Find out about eBay. I still maintain that I was probably one of the first 1% of people who ever registered there. Begin bidding on things that I didn’t even want just so that I could say that I beat someone in the bidding process.
3, Summer 1998 – Get out of college, work at Westinghouse for 1.5 years programming Visual Basic, JAVA, and FoxPro. Don’t have a ‘net connection at work because of security reasons. Drank many beers.
4, Winter 1999 – Overhear someone talking about Napster and file sharing while enjoying a meal at FatHead’s in Pittsburgh before a Penquins game. Preceded to tell my friends that the guy was full of shit and what he was saying was impossible.
5, Two months later – stuck foot in mouth.
6, 2000 – Not much new, other than Instant Messaging.
7, February 2001 - Start work at CERMUSA, loved the concept of wireless LANs and jumped right into it. Set up a wireless network in my house shortly thereafter.
8, Present time – Still waiting for the next big thing. We are at a point where hardware vastly exceeds most software requirements. Possibilities:
- Home media – being able to integrate cleanly the home PC with home entertainment
- High bandwidth apps have potential, but what can we put on them?
- Wireless clouds around cities, allowing everyone complete access to everything on the net regardless of location.
- RSS??
Personally, I’m going to start delving more into Linux. I’ll also be teaching a comp. sci. 101 class next semester, and I’m hoping that those kids can get me up to date with what’s new out there :)
