At the stroke of midnight forty five years ago, I walked up the long hill at my college campus carefully carrying my precious deck of 80 column punch cards with the FORTRAN program for my thesis for the optimized design for an advanced water distribution network and fed it into input card reader of the time shared IBM S/360 and prayed while waiting for the results. It was make or break time. If any of the punched cards in the deck were shuffled or if they tore in the reader, or misfed I would be in deep trouble. Graduate with a first class or …… Talk about a hanging chad problem.

I did get that first class degree and had to decide between pursuing an advanced degree in the newly created department of computer programming or entering the work force.

I settled for doing advanced research in computer modelling of distribution systems for a couple of years before looking for job outside of academia. Not knowing enough to be worried, I blithely attended an IT open house I saw advertised in Lincolnwood Illinois in January 1978 dressed in my one and only suit — a shiny brown thin polyester affair. In spite of that suit and little experience outside of academia, I got a job in the operations department at a salary that would be below minimum wages today and entered the magic IT rabbit hole. I was part of the operations team of a dozen operations staff working in a 20,000 square foot room housing a water cooled IBM S/370. As the newbie, I was assigned to the graveyard shift. Which worked out well as I was able to spend time honing my system architecture, design and programming skills and was promoted out of operations in less than a year.

When I looked around the magic IT rabbit hole I had fallen into, I found myself in the midst of a fomenting, bubbling revolution and decided to join in the fun. What a ride it has been. The technology revolution that changed my world. Changed the world as we knew it. Isaac Asimov and Arthur C Clarke would instantly recognize this world.

There were no laptops or PCs, no cell phones, no worldwide web or internet access, no WiFi, no Ethernet, no text messaging, no streaming when I first walked into the Office. Yes a physical office. No working remotely from home. No Excel. No Word. No PowerPoint. No pdf. No Google. No Outlook. Not even Microsoft. And …. no Starbucks. Just a large 3270 green screen block oriented terminal connected to a central mainframe. It was the height of current technology!!

The revolution has brought me a long, long way from that open house. I have had to hang on for dear life as the pace of change and innovation has accelerated faster and steeper than a roller coaster. Lots and lots of memories about technology, people, startups and working with innovations and innovators, realware vs vaporware, the go-go dotcom years and the gone gone dotcom bust, the market disruptors following upon market disruptors ….. for example Steve Jobs’ the NeXT computer is long gone but yet it lives on in macOS, iOS, watchOS, and tvOS.

There are so many such stories rattling around in the memory banks.

May be I will  do a blog !!!

It’s been a great adventure and a fascinating journey through the world of technology, break through thinking and change over the last 40 plus years, 37 of them with IBM.  

A thank you to all my fellow revolutionaries who have taught me so much. For that I am grateful.

As the Mock Turtle says ‘”What matters it how far we go? There is always another shore, you know, upon the other side.”  I have traveled a long way and am leaving the comfort of one shore in search of another distant shore. There are other adventures to be had.

Please do regale me and the readers of this blog with your memories of the world of IT and technology. Tell us the stories of your adventures and the battles fought and wars won.  

I hope our paths cross again. And again.