Jaquandor waxes philosophic:
Lots of folks often wax poetic about things we’ve lost in our more technological age, like record stores and big, high-service department stores that take up entire city blocks, but what’s something that we’ve ditched in our techno-era that makes you think, “Yeah, I’m glad we don’t do THAT anymore”?
It occurred to me that I’ve seldom described what it was that I have been doing for a living for the past 22 years. The methodology has changed tremendously, and it’s all about the technology.
The New York Small Business Development Center, which started in 1984, now has 24 centers across the state. The business counselors offer free and confidential one-on-one advisement to budding entrepreneurs and established small businesses alike. Since many of the counselors have been entrepreneurs or have worked in banks or other lending institutions, they know a lot of stuff about the business process.
For the things they DON’T know, the counselors contact the Research Network library, which has librarians with access to databases, and even – dare I say it? – books.
In the early days, we’d print out the research from the databases on something called paper. We’d Xerox pages from books. Then we’d put the information in the mail to the counselor. If for some reason, the package was lost, we’d have to do it over. The search would be in our computers, but we’d still have to reprint. And the copying had to be done over.
Let’s talk about the databases. They were on something called CD-ROM discs. We had two dedicated CD-ROM machines, but if I wanted to use the ProQuest database, and someone else was already using it, I had to wait until she or he was finished.
One of the first major improvements in the operation was the implementation of a LAN, or local area network, where we could ALL access the CD-ROMs at the same time, from our own computers, without having to go to the dedicated machine AND we could use a database even of someone else was using it!
As counselors started getting e-mail, we started to save the information and send some of it electronically. This was not as smooth a transition as one might think. For one thing, as mentioned by https://blog.servermania.com/what-is-unmetered-bandwidth-and-when-do-you-need-it/, the capacity of some of the e-mail servers in the late 1990s could be quite limited. Sending all the information we found could mean either having it bounce back to us, or clog things up on the recipient’s end.
Now, we package the data in an Adobe format. It sits on our server, and the counselors get an e-mail notification that the data are there, through a system called WebMQS, which usually works well. It DOES require the recipient to have the latest free Adobe software. Now, if someone hasn’t received the information, the re-sending now takes 5 minutes rather than 50 or more.
At home, my favorite pairing of technologies is the answering machine and caller ID. I hear, or see on the TV, that it’s a call from 800 Service, which the answering machine announces as “eight-zero-zero shervice” – our machine voice has a lisp! and we are oddly entertained by this – we can freely ignore it. But a familiar cell phone number or a call identified from someone known to us, we’ll pick up.
But the #1 favorite technological change I appreciate has to be the word processor, which allows one to correct errors things easily, rather than backspace on the IBM Selectric typewriter to use that tape which vaguely blots out the typos. No more Wite-Out, either.
When I was writing my last paper for library school in 1992, I had arranged the topics 1a, 2a, 3a, 1b, 2b, 3b, 1c, 2c, 3c. But as I continued, I realized it should have been 1a, 1b, 1c, 2a, 2b, 2c, 3a, 3b, 3c. I did a massive cut and paste, but it was WAY easier than retyping 46 pages.
And, of course, the same technology allows me to write this blog every day, even though I am no better typist than I was 25 or 40 years ago. Because if I had to do write this all longhand, and then type it in a manner that was readable and accurate, this MIGHT be a monthly blog, rather than a daily one.
A quick musing, though on one thing I DO miss as a result of technology: keeping score in bowling. The software won’t let you, and occasionally, it’s just wrong in terms of counting the remaining pins.
The other day I was typing on my document program and remembering when I used to write on what used to be my prized possession, an Underwood-Oliveti semi-portable manual typewriter. With that machine, not only was there some serious physical effort to writing, one had to always anticipate what one wrote before hitting the keys. Now I just type whatever pops into my head because I can always go back and instantly change what I wrote.
What I wonder is how this change, no longer being forced to construct polished good sentences in one’s head before actually writing them, has changed how people write, and consequently how people think. This little change is a new thing in the history of the world. Perhaps an overlooked revolution?
A related note: I don’t miss the big, bound Biological Abstracts books that I used as an undergrad/early grad student when I had to try to find journal articles in my field. You’d have to budget a couple days just to FIND the literature you needed for a short paper. Now, I can just open up JSTOR (which my university pays for, and I’m very grateful they do) and in a matter of seconds, have links to .pdf files of more articles on whatever topic than I could possibly ever read.
I admit, I still compose most stuff (manuscripts, grant proposals, exams) longhand on paper, but I’m incredibly grateful to have the article databases.
And I do my little cane-shaking spiel with my students every semester now, telling them they don’t know how good they have it (Seriously: some of them complain how arduous it is to find a paper using the databases. THEY HAVE NO IDEA.)
I don’t miss this time at all ! Even wonder how I survived ! Everything is so easy today and still most of my friends (all in vintage age) regret that time ! I think they are only afraid of computers and think they bite !
Fillyjonk- Back in the day when you had to write papers for school, you were confined to using whatever material that was physically within your reach. Today your students are expected to search the entire world for relevant data. It’s a classic case of labor-saving technology actually increasing expectations of greater production. It’s like line I once overheard, “I only have two hands, if I had three hands they’d just make me work harder.”