Remembering those “Slow Ol’ Days”
As we get older, reminiscing comes more and more naturally. Part of the reason, of course, is there is more and more life behind us. But, I think it also has to do with the exponential rate at which things change nowadays. Hundreds of years ago, when life was not quite so complicated, things probably didn’t change much over the course of one’s life. There was less to reminisce about. Oh, you might hear the occasional: “I remember when there were no springs on buggy seats. That was a real pain on that bumpy, twenty-mile trip to Aunt Martha’s.” But, for the most part, life was probably pretty static.
Today we have plenty to look back on, and you don’t have to look back too far. I’ve been involved in technology most of my career, and was thinking back and marveling at the changes I’ve seen. For example, back in the mid 80s I worked for a manufacturer of PC peripherals. We made stuff for the IBM PC. For you youngsters, that was the first successful personal computer for businesses, and the device that led to computers being commonplace. It’s hard to believe that only a few years earlier most people didn’t even have a computer at work, let alone at home. There was no email. There was no access to the Internet. Some how, though, we all managed to communicate and get our jobs done.
Change was occurring constantly the few years I was there. I remember we came out with a new 70 MB hard-drive. It was huge. Today, that wouldn’t even hold all of your vacation pictures when you got home, and forget about a video. We also introduced a nifty new “portable” computer. It was shaped like a lunch box and was one of the first with an LCD screen. Of course, it was a monochrome screen, and it wasn’t back-lit, so you had to tilt it at just the right angle to see anything. It had a single floppy-drive (but one of those newer 3.5 inch ones). A year or so later we added a back-lit, color screen and an internal 10 MB hard-drive. Wow!
Intel co-founder Gordon Moore wrote a paper in 1965 in which he noted a trend where the number of components in integrated circuits had doubled every year from the invention of the integrated circuit in 1958. This translated into increases in processing speed, memory capacity, etc. He predicted this trend would continue for at least ten years. That prediction eventually became known as “Moore’s Law”, and here in 2010 it’s still going strong.
Just like computers, which get faster and smaller every year, changes in the Internet industry have been stunning. Fifteen years ago, when I first started at the company that is now ZCorum, we were offering Internet through 14.4 Kbps dial-up modems. I remember the day we proudly bumped everyone up to 28.8, and then later up to the theoretical limit of dial-up service—a blazing fast 56K.
Today, many broadband users routinely get 6 and 10 Mbps, and the new speed limit being proposed by the FCC in the National Broadband Plan is 100 Mbps for 100 million Americans by 2020. That’s 100,000 Kbps in “mid-ninety’s speak”, or 7,000 times faster than that 14.4 modem. The FCC is not overreaching, either. Far from it. Those speeds are already possible, and in fact are already being delivered in limited areas by the large broadband players. It seems the way things are progressing, it will only be a few years when we will be getting speeds clocked in Gbps, and reminiscing about those laughable 100 Mbps connections that are yet to come.
What changes do you recall in technology? How fast do you think broadband connections will be fifteen years from now? Leave a comment and let me know.
Author: Rick Yuzzi (68 Articles)
Rick Yuzzi has over 25 years experience in sales, marketing and management. Hired in 1995 to establish the sales department for a fledgling Internet Service Provider that later became ZCorum, he is now a key member of the executive team, overseeing the company's marketing efforts. In addition to blogging on marketing and the industry, Rick also tweets as @ZCorum.