Video není dostupné.
Omlouváme se.
Salesman Saw The Future Of Computers In 1979. Was He Right?
Vložit
- čas přidán 27. 05. 2015
- The time was 1979. I was doing a PBS television documentary called The Information Society. The TV special was looking at the coming of the information age and the end of the industrial age. At the time, computers were beginning to be seen in places like banks and grocery stores and even on the farms. But most people were not aware of these changes, and very few knew what a microchip was or had ever seen one.
So I picked several small cities and towns to visit to see the changes in action. One place I filmed was Cedar Rapids Iowa. My 16mm film team walked into a store selling computers and started asking questions. The manager of the store spoke out in this interview.
At the time, I was not savvy enough or smart enough or aware enough to know just how brilliant he was at understanding the future that was to come. He could see it and was convinced that everything would change as he describes. The coming of the Internet and the world wide web. The coming of personal computers to be used in America's homes. Computers to be used in schools and libraries. Computers being adopted and used by every business. Even computers that would be handheld and wireless.
Not everything that he saw coming is described in this interview clip because I wasn't smart enough to leave my 16mm camera rolling when the scene that I had come to film had ended.
16mm film was expensive and I was being careful not to use too much on what appeared to me to be irrelevant responses to my questions.
The store was crowded with kids and teenagers. I found this to be true in every city in America and I assume in other countries as well. These ahead of their time young folks could see this new information age coming. They were fascinated by computers and were trying out every computer in the store while we were there.
You can see the entire one-hour documentary by searching the words "information society" on my CZcams channel.
If you found this clip of interest, I would appreciate your clicking the Super Thanks button to the right below the video screen. Your support makes it possible for me to keep on presenting clips like this one.
Thank you
David Hoffman filmmaker
Is it just me, or did people back then communicate better? Everyone sounds like an expert public speaker.
I guess everybody was required to take a communications class
We live in idiocracy where you are mocked if you speak in proper sentences.
it's probably because the only people that agreed to be on camera are ones that are very comfortable with it.
There are plenty of people around in the background and they're not talking on camera, that's probably why the had to even go to two different shops.
no absolutlely not but it was en vouge to speak polite !
Everyone just had manners back then is all.
They didn't predict the future, they worked hard to make that future true. Here we are now
Both.
the best way to predict the future is to invent it.
Cnovsky that's a very good point
Yeah except that 3 day work week became a 7 day work week, thanks for nothing computers.
internets been around since the 1960s
1979 was my eleventh year at IBM. At that point, I'd spent 4 years fixing jet fighter electronics in the USAF, 7 years installing and fixing mainframes at IBM and 4 years troubleshooting OS problems in the field. The PCs of 1979 were toys in my mind but within 4 years it was obvious that a revolution was going on. In many ways, computers are much the same, only the scale and connectivity has changed as new technologies have surfaced. I'm glad and fortunate that I was part of that industry for so long and witnessed so much. It was quite a ride.
I worked with printers and copiers during that time and I still remember seeing a lady at a university place a document on this thing, which was a scanner, then go back to her computer, then print the document on an early laser printer. I remember telling my manager that this 'digital copier' was the wave of the future. He and management laughed at me. This was in the early 80's. I was smart enough back then to ask for and get a company PC to learn from. Also, on my own, I took local courses in computers. 10 years later, I was working on million dollar printing systems while my co workers who thought I was nuts with my 'digital printer' comments ended up stuck in the quagmire of light lens analog printing. I also had the opportunity of getting on the internet way back when you got feeds from BBS's and such and when it was all text based many years prior to the world wide web. It was a lot like text based forums today but without any graphics. I quickly saw how addictive it could be and told people that this is not going to get people more connected, but, rather, have them moving away from the real world and into their closets and bedrooms just tapping keys night and day. I also saw it as an avenue for, of all things, porn. But most of all, I saw it as a colossal waste of time and energy. I saw the possibility of the internet dominating people's lives. And it came to pass.....
archangele1 - my dad ran one of those bbs's in the early 80s
Hope you bought Apple stock
Tell that to your hotdogs vendor. No one cares.
good man
An articulate, visionary store owner who sounds like a great conversationist. No computer can replace that.
But it's going to and it is..
I don't see this computer thing catching on.
MrC0MPUT3R nope they are terrible and dont get me started on useless SSD's and when are we going to be able to interact with videos? like if i move my mouse it changes the camera angle hmmm that would be neat
MrC0MPUT3R WHY WOULD YOU WANT SOME LETTERS ON A SCREEN?? It's pointless. only stuff for nerds. This "internet" and "programming" business will fail in a few years, you'll see.............
"The growth of the Internet will slow drastically, as the flaw in 'Metcalfe's law'-which states that the number of potential connections in a network is proportional to the square of the number of participants-becomes apparent: most people have nothing to say to each other! By 2005 or so, it will become clear that the Internet's impact on the economy has been no greater than the fax machine's."
- Paul Krugman, New York Times moron
ageisjustthreeletters , I wasted time typing about how most meaninglessly empty statements are typed over said networks.
LMAO! Great comment.
4:17
"3 day work week"
He accurate predicted the usefulness of computers,
But completely underestimated corporate greed.
it will come, its just a matter of time. if a job is replaceable with a robot (hard- or software), it will be done. in the future enterprises have to pay taxes for using robots and humans have more time. ergo 3 day work week is totally possible - or 50% unemployment, im not sure about this one. ;)
Corporate "greed" creates jobs, not the Govt.
Miller Forester, in the middle ages a peasant would abdicate his freedom and enter into bondage with the feudal lord in exchange for protection plus a small plot of arable land from which he could get his subsistence. The lord, in turn, would get labour force to do the work in his fields. Today hardly anyone (I hope) would argue in favor of the landlord: rather than saying "it's the feudal lord who gave the peasants protection and means of subsistence", we now see that a third way is possible, one in which the worker/peasant can get his subsistence without completely losing his/her freedom.
Your argument in defence of corporate greed on the basis that it creates "jobs" -- jobs which are far from being a realisation of anyone's dreams and aspirations but rather diminish the individual, sucks all his/her creativity and often his/her will to live ---, this argument neglects the possibility of there being an alternative in which people could STILL get their subsistence without being miserably exploited to the point where only 2/7 of their lives are decent (namely the weekends when they don't have to "do their jobs").
Your comment proves his point though
D Ceased,
The recent sci-fi series The Expanse has a great example of this possible future. In one scene, a character in the show (who was originally born on Mars) goes to Earth and finds themselves in the slums. They meet a homeless man and learn that he knows a lot about medicine, enough to be a doctor in fact. But he's homeless because there's a years-long waiting list to enter the employment pool. So even someone smart enough to be a doctor has to live in the slums. It's a bleak future indeed.
dvn9 I appreciate your optimism and truly hope that you're right.
1979: "Let the computer take over the tedium so that 3 day work week becomes a reality"
2018: "This job requires 24/7 on call"
Then don't take the job.
"All issues must be logged on the system, even those that take longer to log than fix"
That's the worst. I understand that my company charges a good chunk of change to the client to have me work on a problem. Thus making it a necessity, but it's still so tedious....
Taxtro implying that you have a choice
Now we are just an instant message away from our bosses. And being issued a work laptop means say goodbye to your personal time, even weekends. And to the one saying "then don't take the job", the point is irony - jobs have gotten even more tedious.
It always fascinates me how well regular people spoke back then. I'm not just talking about them having a different style or using different vocabulary or saying "like" and "y'know" less, I'm talking about the content of their speech, the way they are able to put together long sentences with a beginning, middle, and end that actually communicate an idea. It's the quality of their thought, in other words. Seeing how simply and crudely many of us speak these days, even educated people, is frightening when you step back and look at it. If we can't communicate complex ideas, how can we have serious discussions about the increasingly complicated problems we face as a society?
They (we, as I was 16 in 1979) didn't speak in catch phrases or buzz words. Sound bites hadn't yet become a thing. Attention spans hadn't yet been shortened in order to adjust to the rate of information/stimulus coming to us. Music was in the form of albums; there was no digital jumping around. We only had a few channels of television and to 'channel surf' meant manually changing channels via a knob on the tv. We watched television shows shows rom beginning to end. There was no Internet to enable us to bounce quickly from one subject to the next; we had books, which we read from cover to cover. We didn't have email or text messaging. You either communicated face to face (you know, in person), on the (land line) phone (and since you couldn't take or make those anytime you wanted, that involved planning), or you sat and wrote (by hand) a letter, in ink, on paper. The simple act of writing by hand forces you to think about what you write before you write it. You would consider the overall point of the letter, break it into sections (in your mind) and then write it sentence by sentence, paragraph by paragraph. You knew your starting and ending points before you ever put ink to paper. You can't back space, delete, cut/copy and paste when writing a letter by hand. This was reflected in speech, as well.Taken all together, people simply processed and communicated information differently back then.
Very well said
I honestly believe that you’re wrong, at least about people not communicating complex ideas today. If anything it’s the opposite, we’re even more complex today. Look at the guests Joe Rogan or Lex Fridman have on their podcasts. Those podcasts are mainstream. I just think you people are baffled in the way they speak, the form, not the content. I think the greater problems are that intellectuals with very different ideas which seem wild immediately get criticized without people genuinely listening to them. It’s too easy to criticize the reasoning of someone else to boost one’s ego instead of being helpful.
The mere fact that he's presenting a video (about computers) suggests that he wasn't just a 'regular guy'. But, even with that, yes he's speaking in even tones and coherent, interesting sentences, which is not done today (I can't think of any well-known anglophone tv presenter who speaks in this way today.)
Weird how they mention 2001 as future point and it's been and gone by 16 years. I always find that sort of thing crazy but great.
i love how ancient people talk
No I don't mean the film I mean the year 2001.
Yeah, predicting the way technology progresses is not a linear thing. At least not farther out than 10 years + or -. It tends to stagnate, then multiply depending on economic and social trends.
Oh we got that now. They just shortened weeks to 4 days. Did you miss that meeting?
I remember reading a book 20 years ago that talked about how humans would have a colony on the moon by 1985 (which was already over a decade past even then)
Funny how computers led to the end of computer stores.
Brian Kessler
They didn't.
The stores just relocated to cyberspace.
David Wührer which you need a computer to access
What do you mean? You still have bestbuy
guess you've never heard of the Apple Store, Best Buy, Frys, Micro Centre etc?
@@gregd6022 Really it was the big stores like those ones and radio shack plus online ordering that led to the decline of those small local computer stores. The Mr. Robot type of places.
A computer store manager back then was as eloquent as a university professor today.
You base such a broad conclusion on a single instance? You know, they probably picked the guy because he could talk in front of a camera, not because they wanted to pick an average computer store manager.
The internet wasn't really widely popular until the late 90s, but computers were mainstream before that for things like single player games and simple office programs.
More eloquent!
A lot of people seem to really notice the way interviewees in all these old videos (I don't know about ya'll, but I'm enjoying quite a lot of these little time capsules) speak so lucidly compared to most people today. I'm beginning to wonder if producers made it a precedent to only put good speech on the television. Also, at least one guy appears to be glancing at cue cards.
No it wasn't. He was the most regular guys you could meet and talk with. Society has changed a lot now... In these days, most people had "one" phone on a wall in their house. They had one or two television (an old one not working well and a recent one working ok). These TV's had a 20" or 26" screen MAX... So when, in my case, my father (electrical engineer also) bought us a micro computer for Christmas, it was an event ! I went crazy... lol. It was in 1982 probably... I'm 54 now and when I remember these days, I remember an exciting an simple happiness. I was at the right time in the middle of the biggest revolution in mankind history. I'm a bit sad to see that computers became, to some extent, a problem today and I miss the simpler days.
That fifteen year old son is now 53. Let that sink in.
You act like we can't fathom that, look at human history.
I wonder what happened to that sons carreer. Did he become a programmer? Can you imagine how far ahead of time that kid was... Must have had a bright career.
Chris6661
That's life, you act like we should be surprised.
Jasper Nuboer Everytime I see these old videos I think about this. The uploader has a “man on the street” video about interviewing people in the information industry. And one man says “if my job paid better I would like it better.” That was 1978 I believe. Not even a decade later, he probably made some great money.
@@tony_anello What's funny about the whole situation is that the 15 year old kid mentioned is very possibly still working in the computer sciences industry as some head manager somewhere since he's only 53. He could have another decade of work left along with a very nice retirement.
Nice to see no one has used the word "like". Very well spoken. Where did we go wrong like?
Like....The 80's maaaan !!
OurEire The education system over the last 30 years has failed. Now you have things like gender studies.
A lot less "up-talking" back then. Now grown-ass adults talk like 14 year old valley girls no one talks like an adult anymore.
who the fuck liked your comment? :)
Or like where did we "literally" go wrong?
Back in the days, when
1/ Small, specialized businesses still existed
2/ Store employees were knowledgable
3/ People were actively engaged in their children's education
John Redberg number 3 didn't work, the children's children are uneducated fucks.
It's odd that my brother and I self-taught ourselves to program, where my parents don't know the first thing about it.
I think it's because the people who didn't educate their children had many kids, therefore increasing the number of people who are uneducated. Same thing happens today, blacks being an example: the black population in America only grows, while whites are becoming a minority.
Ignorance breeds ignorance, and it breeds fast.
I knew a guy back then that had a computer and a laser printer that used a special paper with no ink, letters and such were just burned on. It seemed so geeky at the time.
my parents were not engaged in mine. my father was actually engaged with his computer. my father was essentially that guy.
2:53 - He was spot on about MD's. 40 years later and computers are still very controversial in the medical field. Some physicians love them, some view them as a necessary evil and some hate them with a passion.
He sure nailed the 3 day work week. Since then it's gone from 1 member of the household working 40 hrs to both in the household working 40 hours in order to maintain the same quality of life as the original single household worker. I'm not blaming the computer, just pointing out that his prediction was not so accurate.
You123Tube321Lover yes consumerism might be too.
Yet the average office worker spends half of any given workday fucking around on the internet.
Exactly -- people back then had smaller homes, one (non-expensive) car, and didn't feel the need to have every expensive gadget and electronic device there was.
You can tell he was joking. Come on.
Nah single-worker family here, only 40 hour work weeks. House, kids, decent car. I don't make a lot but am doing fine. Mostly about where you live, for instance the midwest is easy living.
The guy in the grey hair at :53 is Marty Kite. I met him in Chicago back in the late '80's I can't believe I ran across him in this video.
Arthur Balourdos if true that's bloody awesome
is he alive
Cool! I looked him up but he's gone now since 2011 www.legacy.com/obituaries/name/martin-kite-obituary?pid=153486096&view=guestbook www.legacy.com/obituaries/chicagotribune/obituary.aspx?page=lifestory&pid=153486096
Electrical engineer check, Illinois, check
It's a small world. The computer and the internet has made it smaller.
That's incredible.. such a small world. Cheers to you, Arthur
Damn I wish these people introduced themselves....curious where they are now...
Search the description and I bet you can find them. “The Information Society” Cedar Rapids, Iowa
I'd say mid forties
With that moustache, what internet "field" do you think he went into? Follow the money.
andy
you should hear this talk... "DerbyCon 3 0 3104 The Mysterious Mister Hokum Jason Scott" for more on that thought...lol
nah. He might be around 50-55 max. In the 70s people in their 60s looked more like late 70s or early 80s look today. Besides he talked about his 15 year old son and I didn't know about many people who had kids after 40 back then.
Now find this guy and interview him again
There are 2 guys in the video. I'm assuming you're referring to the computer store owner?
He was a 30 something then. He'll be a 70 something now. Probably fed up with his grandchildren's addiction to their phones.
That would be cool.
@@peterc9153 I believe he is an avid user of a smartphone himself!
I've tried really hard, but this guy is hard to locate!
Anyone doubting this video's authenticity need look no further than the uploader's other videos. He's chock full of archival footage from years of heavily being involved in film from years ago.
Not sure why anyone would fake something so mundane. I actually find these little vignettes of average life that are almost now lost very charming and fun to watch. The "predicts future" part just makes it more interesting for most viewers, but I just love looking at the clothes and hearing them talk about how things were back then. Very good preservation here, David! Thanks for the share.
Thank you. Having made documentaries all of my professional career, now 55 years, I can tell you that nobody would be faking this stuff. It costs too much and it gets too little. The people who are saying it is fake all seem to come from the same system-whatever it is-where somebody is suggesting they say it is fake. Their words are all so similar. I wish that I hadn't dumped the outtakes to any of my movies back then. They would be absolutely priceless today. I didn't see the future as clearly as I do now.
David Hoffman-filmmaker
David Hoffman sir, do you know if these folks are still around? And if so, how they feel about the progress of technology since then?
FierceDeityXeroX You got the hardest profile pic on earth.
Anyone can predict the future, but getting it right is another story!
For anyone doubting the video's authenticity look at the dude's hairstyle. Check mate
No up-talking back then. They sound sure and confident. No question sounding sentences. I love it!
ke1nyc2012 I didn't know what up-talking was until I just researched it. I am familiar with it though and I absolutely hate it.
I'm guilty of that and I'm a millennial. I'll work on it starting now.
I know right?
the very definition of a language is that it must evolve. you may not like it, but that's just the natural evolution of language
Lucas Gore
It's devolution.
My son is now 15 and well uh he is still 15
lol
people look to the right when they are accessing their memory
carabela125 really?
carabela125 I look at my left
Your left is our right, when we are facing you.
As computers get better, people seem to be getting worse.
audience2 You are absolutely correct.
audience2:
Social media is evil.
It's because the goal of technology is to make life easier. Making life easier lessens challenges. Less challenges causes our brains to think less
This is this most true statement that could be taken from this
Can you IMAGINE how intelligent humans must have been before the discovery of fire? :p
This is back when the only people who had computers were intelligent mathematical types and could programme, today almost everyone (1st world) has numerous devices but hasn't a clue how to do anything more than take pictures of themselves and shop.
That is an interesting comment. However take into consideration nowadays people don't need to be a programmer a mathematical savy to use it, and there are absolutely smart people who do not know how to code. Take for instance the founder of airbnb Brian chesky or canva founder she doesn't know how to code and is helping people to move on from photshop
Good point. Weird how the dorks with computer savvy have become the world leaders and creators?
Actually, "normal" people do everything exept coding with computers. A huge proportion of people work with a computer, most of them aren't programmers. These people know there way around quite well actually. Learning to code is useless unless you want a coding job since it takes at least 3 years of intense classes to start coding in a efficient and useful way. (I am a programmer).
Well no. Even in 1979, as this was filmed, there were a lot of "home computers" where you only had to know how to load a game into that and run it.
That was what the vast, vast majority did with the Apple 2.s, Atari 800, TRS-80 etc.
In fact operation these computers was a lot, lot easier than learning how to use a modern computer with a modern complex operating system like Windows today.
It became much more complex with the arrival of the IBM PC and Dos.
As for the geeks, there are now lots of more people using Linux than all the people using all the computers back then, including the non-geeky majority.
I also think that the average computer user didn't know anything more about programming than the average Joe today. In fact more people today know about programming than back then! In some countries computer programming is even mandatory to learn at school for all.
Agree
So much for that three day work week and less tedium
You said a mouth full brother.
Wait another 50 years and it's very probable.
as (becoming) programmer myself, i can say that technologies replacing jobs and making work week shorter is not a reality we should so quickly assume ideal.
to elaborate in a condense manor, a society with possible jobs occupied mainly by machines is a society where man-power becomes less in demand.
i.e, horses used to be very useful for transportation: when we had no automation, we had a great value for horses, now how many people do you see aspiring to be horse-owners. Same concept is applicable to humans in regards to jobs and so on
+ John Doe We are already at the level if we reorganized our economic system every person would only have to work 8 hours a week.
McBale, It would require heavily taxing the parasites that benefit the most from the capitalist system, and since they've infiltrated every level of government with their bloated wallets, good luck with passing the legislation that would help the 99.99% survive.
holy shit people talked way clearer and more educatedly back then
Yeah, theys educatedly alright
Ken I know write?!
Budhi M. its just a joke
And to think, they lived in homes painted with lead and water pipes fitted with lead solder (or even completely lead-based). Hell, lead was even still in the air in '79 as the phaseout wasn't complete yet. And don't even get me started on Led Zeppelin and proto heavy metal...
+Ed S. don't forget leaded gasoline. love canal, 3-mile island.
But 79 did give us "In through the Outdoor"
This is the most intelligent computer store manager I've seen or heard in my lifetime
A life working in a cubicle is almost the definition of a tedious life. There was NEVER going to be a 3-day work week. You're simply expected to get a LOT more done in a regular week.
so almost 4 decades later and we can watch this with a program application on a telephone.
Amazing how fast technology is developing. Where will we be in four more decades? It can be scary to think about.
ageisjustthreeletters We'll be batteries when the machines rise up and implement the Matrix!
The Plurality is the Antifachrist.
I doubt anyone under the age of 80 believes that 1979 was "very recently."
aka tricorder
He sounds really smart for a computer store manager!, He spoke in the manner of nowadays CEO's.
"Computers are designed to eliminate tedium in our lives" so true. Wish the software engineers understand this ethos each time I get an "update" every day, every hour, every minute... and having to wait for those updates to download and install... and cause issue then having to wait for a fix for those updates to be delivered if ever :(
teinspringz you can disable auto updates on just about any OS.
Updates are only really bad when it comes to online gaming
I laughed at the eliminating tedium part... yet, here we are wasting countless hours on CZcams.
In the case of software engineers writing horrible, unsustainable code, I can agree; a software engineer's job is to apply the fundamentals of system development to their algorithms, making them as efficient as possible. If an algorithm's exact method of operation opens up software vulnerabilities, then someone will notice and exploit them; as no system is entirely unbreakable, this problem will always exist. This, in theory, is the reason for updates: they can be applied to a program to fix vulnerabilities that a hacker (or a virus) may exploit to do things such as stealing data or damaging or taking command of a system. When updates are implemented for the wrong reasons (read: sloppy programming), then I can empathise, but updates are essential in modern computing as a measure against one of the less fortunate side-effects of the internet: crime.
Dont update then. For phones, do what I do and just buy something from oneplus or Samsung and just keep that phone for 5+ years. For a desktop, just make it yourself and upgrade parts if you need to. You can disable windows security updates or schedule them to update overnight.
I remember trying to talk my Mom into buying Apple stock back in the early 80s. She said “Oh, Honey. Nobody’s going to want a computer on their desk at home.” 😂
+Lynn that's more intelligent than my dad, I told him to buy google when google was new. All he said seeing the google homepage was "Hello Mr Google".
"A computer never obsoleted a job that didn't need to be obsoleted." Like he said, It removes the repeating tedium from human effort, allowing focus to go towards greater things. Most of the world's effort is wasted on simply trying to survive. From half the total population struggling to meet basic needs, to the rest struggling to pay rent. We have bankrupted each other into artificial scarcity and unnecessary suffering.
ungratefulmetalpansy they actually are mostly automated... most slaughterhouses for years now have been 90% automated conveyor lines that do the killing and a lot of the butchering. the staff at a slaughterhouse is smaller than the staff at a jimmy johns because of automation.
silversobe obsoleted isnt a word.
What will we do when every single job in the future will be taken over by robots and computers? (Be it in 100 years or 1000)
Spend more time on existential shit that computers won't be able to comprehend or otherwise deem a waste of resources, like visiting the stars and other forms of exploration.
silversobe wow, first CZcams comment to ever make me think
I worked part-time in a Computer Store much like that one in the year that the Apple II came out. The pioneering spreadsheet Visicalc sold most of them. The biggest upgrade was a Z80 coprocessor card. However the hottest sellers were the Atari units, and not just because of games, the buyers in our store were looking for the Word Processing package which came with the Atari at that time. Much better functionality than electric typewriters of the era. The highest end buyers bought CPM based systems with 10 MB hard disks.
The main spokesperson here in this old video is well spoken. Open shirt and all! That was radical dress in those days. He's right that computers do not take away jobs that humans should be doing. Humans are meant to use our wonderful adaptability! Not act like machines.
At the time of this video I worked full time as a systems programmer on minicomputer systems costing half a million in hardware, DEC's and SEL's. 128KB memory was good. 50 MB disks drives, winchesters. The drives looked like top loading washing machines, the winchesters were a removable platter hard disk. A ex-nuclear navy guy, an EE, at worked mocked my advocacy of the personal computers, to him they would never be more than toys. And his was a typical view, perhaps a majority view in even the newer engineers. They loathed software guys. I was both.
A little more than a year later I was working at a company making military graphic terminals, and I remember spending a few hours here and there talking with the then very small Microsoft software team who had just released a Pascal for the 8086. That was pretty buggy, but there was nothing else. Zenith made the best PC's then, and they ran a better spreadsheet than Visicalc and the then famous Lotus 123, can't recollect the name but it became Excel iirc. DEC had the best personal graphics computer, based a vector list graphics processor made by NEC, but it was too far ahead of the curve, and it was pricey.
Bob Van Wagner The spreadsheet that you are trying to remember that was the prequel to Excel was MS Multiplan. Excel first ran on Apple, then was ported to The IBM PC in 1986 or thereabouts. I seem to remember here in the UK, you could be on first name terms with members of MicroSoft Support it was all so small to begin with. First Pc's I used were DEC Rainbows - really advanced for the time.
Wow, thanks for the history lesson, really interesting!
I love the computer jargon of this comment , just rapid fire computer vernacular! Thank you for your knowledge.
*By 1979 I had been a home computer hobbyist for 3++ years! I built my first home computer in 1976, on a 6800 platform: it had 4k of RAM (a very BIG amount at the time!), and I wrote my own "monitor" for it (a multiuser core). I was working as a computer programmer at the time at Blue Cross/Blue Shield, and everyone was **_very_** interested in my homebrew computer that supported 4 simultaneous users!*
*The real area of interest at the time was those shops using "minicomputers", things like the Data General Novas and Eclipses, or the DEC PDP 11s: my little 6800 was only a small box, yet it performed comparably to a small PDP that required three racks of gear, 220 volts, and $200,000. It was very clear by 1979 that the microprocessor was about to revolutionize society.*
"So then that 3 day work week really does become a reality."
More like 7 days a week, 2-3 jobs, 40+ hours a week, no benefits, and still below poverty line.
Where are people working 2 or 3 jobs? I would love to see someone working 2 to 3 jobs and barely making a living. That sounds like BS to me. What do you define as poverty? Government subsidized housing? Affordable large screen TVs?
Sounds like right wing capitalist USA to me. Here in the Netherlands I can work part time, receive benefits and earn enough money to live comfortably in a big apartment. Social democracy FTW!
He probably just said it in a joking manner
If you're working jobs like that, you're likely working in retail, food, or the hospitality industry, and those 2-3 jobs are part-time jobs, which of course offer no benefits. You're not engaged in a profession. You're doing the kind of work literally anyone can do, and certainly nothing that requires a specific skill. Check out community colleges. They have great vocational training programs that can get you on a path to a full-time job with a living wage and benefits. And you can get into those programs extremely affordably and often with the flexibility to work around your current work schedule. The reality is that you simply can't expect generous compensation if you don't have marketable skills. You'll need to take a risk and do more than filling coffee cups if you want financial stability.
Get a profession, not a job.
This guy was pretty prophetic but I don't think he ever would have imagined how dependent the average business is on computer technology nowadays. Back then, a company might employ 50 people to update or produce some sort of paperwork. Today, you have three people and an IT guy tasked with the same responsibility. That's why everything comes to a standstill if a company's computers are down. Three people can't possibly do the work of fifty people.
I love talking to people like this. Wish I could have someone like that in my family. Calm, rational, understanding, and logical.
Well, I'm 68 and back then everybody in my high school was required to take at least two courses in speech. Basic intro and public speaking. Then, if you wished, you could do debate, expository, oral interpretation of prose and poetry, theater, etc. Now it's all dumbed down. Popular culture, rap and hip hop, drugs, general social decline and stupidity all contribute
Parents who hated school raising children in their own image. "Social" media replacing actual social skills. Short attention spans, lack of true interaction, lack of meaningful conversation. The law of unintended consequences.
Michael Burke “rap and hip hop” fuck off old man.
@@onedrive8422 Did you realise your exact response to the older gentleman just proved his point.
@@alucardhellsing1037 Not necessarily. Verbosity is not a necessary component of communication. If he was able to convey his point in a single line then that is acceptable. He does have a point though. Michael Burke is ignorant. Communication is surely different than it was many decades ago, but the communication standards of the 1960's was far different than the communication of the 1930's. The 1930's much different than the 1830's, etc. etc.
Communication conveys information. Society and the people within it are constantly changing. The needs and methods of communication change. It is ignorant to think that simply because you cannot understand how a modern society communicates that it is somehow inferior. Listing "rap and hip hop" as contributing factors is incredibly short sited and naive. A style of music does not necessitate the quality of communication. This sounds too much like the adults of the early 1900's blaming Elvis, rock music, and gyrating hips for the decline of their society. And to attempt to link drugs and modern society is fallacious. Was it not the 60's and 70's where drug use and "free love" were rampant? "Popular culture"? Is that not by pure definition in existence at every point in time?
Don't attempt to rewrite history. Drugs, sex, music styles, and stupidity have always been present. Society changed as it has done for millennia. Perhaps we do have shorter attention spans nowadays. But you know, at work I have three computer monitors and 8 CPU cores. My machine runs several applications simultaneously. My attention span is suited to the world I live in. Often I require breadth, not depth of attention to supervise multiple processes. Today I had the voices of my coworkers over my telephone on a conference call at the same time I was writing computer code and performing internet searches on my other monitor.
Most adults I speak with today can barely manage single variable algebra. That is a common skill found in today's middle school students. Many of the people in my high school made it up to calculus. That was very uncommon in the mid 20th century. So maybe fewer speech classes could have been taken and more math classes. We as individuals today are educated on what will help us to prosper in the world we live in today.
Lastly, let's all realize that Michael Burke didn't come to this comment section to compliment the speaking abilities of the man in the film. He came here to disparage others. To talk about how people today are not as good at speaking. To comment on his assessment of the rampant stupidity of people today. He had nothing kind to contribute and provided little value to the conversation. So if I may quote @One Drive,
Fuck off, Michael Burke.
One Drive fuck off zoomer
@@onedrive8422 ok i say ok boomer but thats rude to your elders do you say that to your grandparents?
I was an early user, programming computers at age 11 in 1981, just two years after this video. I made games, and simulations, some of it from copying programs out of books and magazines, some out of my own head. So much to learn and try and so many advances coming out every couple of years. As games became more sophisticated and the graphics more advanced I think it got harder for kids in their basements to make games that looked the same quality as the ones they could play on their PCs or consoles so interest in programming by kids maybe dropped off a bit in the 90's? Anyway I've been programming professionally for 22 years now but it all started back in 1981 with a Commodore Vic20 and a man made of ascii characters doing jumping jacks.
Oh yeah! Programing in basic out of a magazine to make the snake eating eggs and stuff. We had a TI-99 4A with voice modulator and saved to cassette tape, then moved up to Commodore 64. My friend had the old Tandy around 82.
Kingston Eldridge, sane here! Same year 1981!!!
I'm interested in programming now, is it not as fun as it used to be? Or is it too complex compared to the 1980s?
I'm still waiting for that 3 day work week.
Todd Francis it wonderful. But I am an exception at my place.
I work 3 days a week. My employer just doesn't know it..
It would be possible, but we are living in capitalism era, they don't want you to live free, but to be a slave of the system, so $ dropped hard through the time. In the time of this video, it was worth it about 4 times more than now, so i believe, if that rate is current rate, you would work even 2 days...
You, me and everybody else.
It's not because what you say sounds logical that it's true. Since you're not backing it up with anything, I can only assume you're speculating.
Three day work week - hah! Right now I'd be happy with four 😊
Since 1995, Productivity has skyrocketed. Wages and work hours have plateaued. The rich have become richer while the poor have increased in numbers and the upper to middle class gap has increased.
Richard
productivity may have gone up but a good chunk of that comes from automation...pretty sure that the majority of workers are far LESS valuable then they were back then- the lack of semi skilled manufacturing jobs that paid well enough to raise a family on one income left a ton of waste workers while the high tec jobs that are open often get filled with better qualified overseas imported workers as US born workers with the needed skills are in short supply.
maghox
how is it BS?
ABSOLUTE poverty has declined in that there is MORE STUFF for people and its cost has declined (esp electronics)but the production of that stuff is mainly done by machines or cheeper workers in the 3rd world...the value of a workers labour is a)how rare/hard it is to do their job and B)how valuable what they make is to other people The US worker today is neither hard to replace NOR do they make stuff that other people want AT THE PRICE when they can get it from Asia for pennies on the dollar...
MaghoxFr Idiot.....poverty is increasing in western countries, especially children living in poverty
Ian
true, but as I pointed out ABSOLUTE poverty has declined... even the poorest person in Europe or the USA has a decent caloric intake, better access to education and a vast array of helpful tec...sadly the calories are mostly empty, the education has made us stupid and the super computers in our pockets are used to surf porn and send selfies ... relative poverty is huge but even the poorest of us really should consider that we SHOULD be happier, smarter and healthier then a king or Emporer of days gone by :)
Damn, I gotta love how clean the store looked back then. Weird to think that such a place even existed back in the 70s.
"A Computer has never obsoleted a job which didn't have to be obsoleted" ...Well done, Sir. I've been saying this for years.
For those who may think this is a fake, I'd like to bring to your attention, the small black object right near the second man's arm. That is a MANUAL CREDIT CARD machine. Most people over age 35 will most likely know what this is. A credit card was placed into the device, a 3 page credit card slip with carbon paper was placed on top and the piece on top would be slid back and forth causing the raised numbers on the card to imprint the card number onto the receipt. Customer gets one. The store gets one and the last one would be sent to the credit card issuing bank. Here's the best part, the transaction would NOT be processed immediately. Several days or even weeks might pass for the account to charged. If this is a fake video made to look from decades ago, their attention to detail is astounding.
A lot of people are surprised the way these engineers speak. What we consume from the TV influences the way a lot of people speak. There's a lot of junk on TV these days that shows people talking in the ugliest ways possible. I blame the media.
Avenue X at Cicero That's true most of it comes from mtv and E.
Avenue X at Cicero blame comment threads and texting. people are getting use to taking 10 minutes to think of a good reply.
Avenue X at Cicero although it's been mainstream for a while to blame the media, recently it actually holds even more obvious weight given how blatantly biased and corrupt all legacy media shows itself to be
Indrid Cold Mothman Prophecies was a great film.
If one ever questions whether America is in a state of "dumbing down," they need only to watch some old video tapes, such as this one.
Great content David. What he said 40 years ago has become a reality. "We didn't need more arms or legs that's why we have a computer", "computer will only eliminate the jobs that need to be eliminated." Phenomenal words. Can you please interview that person again. Thanks
These men were good ! They were already deeply involved into programming since it was the only thing to do during those years. It was the beginning of "Basic" programming (the language was already installed into the machines). They were right about "our" present except for one thing : nobody could predict such disinformation and conspiration theories and other crazy things that we find on the internet. There is a clear and present danger... I hope to see some kind of control before dying... Our young adults, kids, teens are not reading anymore; they just go on the internet and take some bites of info from here and there with no serious learning process. Sometimes, it gives them a rather very strange way of understanding life and history... Thank you David !
Good post Eric. I share your worry!
I bet this guy is still in business :-)
Very interesting footage, Hoffman.
drumstick74 he died in 2009
DhOg 13 only joking dudes. he's probably not in business anymore because he's probable about 75-80.
DhOg 13 He was only 10 here.
+Vincent Cuttolo
You actually believe the official story on 9/11? How fucking gullible can you get?
The resolution is high because this was filmed. On *film*.
Now - "I bought my son an iphone and was the biggest mistake of my life."
Curse u Steve jobs
Please explain, I dont have any kids yet.
that's right, you should have gotten him a samsung galaxy
2:14 this final speech is fantastic. This man really knew what he was talking about
I find it quite funny how quiet the background noise is. No blaring tvs, radios, music sound tracks--just silence.
Back then you had to use something called "conversation" & "imagination" to help pass the time.
It's interesting to hear the way they phrase themselves and the manner they speak. Today most people speak completely different. If you go further back to the 40s and 50s, people spoke even more eloquently.
.......then people found Facebook, Twitter , Instagram and society went into retrograde.
ruse mode damn straight.
It really hasn't.
rube mode?
I think all it did was expose what was already there.
What stpaulimdog said.
And George, there has never been a society with the amenities it has now. The poor live like kings compared to previous ages. Aside from technological advances, war has become less frequent and bloody.
someone find this guy and interview him today..................great 70's video
Man I love The Midnight;
David Hoffman has the best time machine.
I love how articulated his speech is. A reflection of a person with well structured and composed thought process. What happened to this kind of people? Maybe we don't let ourselves think in our free time. We don't let our brain run wild with imagination and curiosity. I guess it is easier to just kill time, quite often using computers (ironically). And what about spare time? It seems to get shorter and shorter, even though we live in an era that there should be plenty of it.
Better educated, with better manners and people were also more sociable. The internet starting in the mid 1990's corrupted society and has made people lose their interpersonal skills.
because you saw 1 person doesn't mean everyone in that time was like this
Such people are still here and existing. But they're not demanded.
You can't help but notice how much better his vocabulary and grammar is than today's average store clerk.
Clips from this were used in the song “Youth” by The Midnight. Released on the album Kids (2018).
I like how he smiles at the end, even he knew the three day work week was never going to happen.
JimsEquipmentShed its reality for me but yes, it's not normal.
0:30 *I found the computer genius, he's in the back.*
ContactingTheDead holy shit
Three day work week? When an employer lowers his overhead by replacing a worker with a computer, the employer gets the raise; he doesn't share it with the remaining employees. The newly unemployed person has a hard time finding another job because other employers have also eliminated his position. If he does find work, it's at a lower salary because he's competing with all the other people who lost their jobs to computers. Unhappy and wanting a change, these people vote for someone who promises to turn back the clock, even if that person was one of those employers who, like the one above, fired people, or refused to pay people, or screwed them by repeatedly filing bankruptcy. The three-day work week can only happen if the people who've had their hours cut or eliminated can be given the same take-home pay. But this is not what has happened. Corporations and high-earners have enjoyed the riches brought about by more productivity with fewer employees, and have gotten huge tax cuts. Services that people need have been reduced. And most people still work five days but with lower wages.
You need to be put on video like these guys! Great comment!
I love the timing of him saying “..immediate response on the screen” followed directly by a “beep” from the computer in the background at 0:15
Brother... the 80s will BLOW your mind!
-The Future
JC Denton whatashame Are you dumb? This was filmed in 1979 which is in the 1970s... The 80s were the future...
I would love to see one of these guys react to a smart phone if they could've been shown one back then lmao
JC Denton whatashame yes it was. Look at David Hoffmans replies
What makes you think it isn't 1979?
JustAsPlanned1
Probably a flat-Earther.
There's always one....
JustAsPlanned1 Because it says so..!!!
So this is where The Midnight sampled for their opening track to the album Kids 🔥
I think if the two men in this video got a real glimpse into the future they would be very disappointed.
M B why, what they predicted became reality, beyond probably their wildest imaginations (this whole "people of the past would be disapointed of us" thing needs to die, it's stupid)
@Jan Berrios Its more socializing now. Kids can gain critical social skills online through their friends now, when before you would have a wider amount of kids without social skills.
My parents were complete helicopter parents and because of their flawed way of thinking, I could never go to my friends house and hang out with them. I could however hang out with everyone online in someway. I could argue its actually more sociable.
However you and me have a very different interpretation of social media. Facebook and Instagram are not social. You have feedback loops in communities and its not really talking with people 1 to 1. But most kids nowadays use apps such as discord, which basically let us call each other and talk in a one on one scenario or with multiple people at a time in a single voice channel. This is significantly better than using Facebook or Instagram as a social app and can actually teach you social skills even if you have parents who stunt it. However I agree that it isnt a replacement for face to face conversations and should only just supplement it.
practically everyone has a handheld computer that they have on them at all times with access to limitless information and use it for the stupidest things. I'm including myself of course.
We keep thinking of amazing inventions to create a perfect future while forgetting that our human flaws stay the same, so its always an uphill battle
I remember that people thought it would bring about a new democratic era, bring peace to nations, erase barriers to markets or maybe even markets themselves, and bring on some wired technocratic utopia...Then i guess we find that since everyone's linked up it just falls back into entropy.
At the time computers were generally used by the smartest 5% of the population, so this group was making predictions based upon their own intelligence and the intelligence of other computer users. To be honest things remained the same until the tail end of the 1990s. For the first five years that I used the internet, 1993-1998, it was pretty much a given that people posting things on websites (well, more commonly NEWSGROUPS at the time) were going to be smart. Between 1998 and 2003 that all changed. Basically half of the idiots turned up, and they stayed. The other half turned up between 2007 and 2009 when cell phones started to become the dominant devices to access the web.
I remember the early 80's when writing your own programs was assumed if you were going to buy one of these things. There were commercial software, but not enough to justify buying a computer. I bought one to learn about computers. Timex Sinclair 1000, then Commodore Vic20, then C64. Buying a modem meant connecting to electronic bulletin boards that other hobbyists set up in their homes.
It was really enlightening to hear these men so eloquently express themselves, v/s what we hear from lay, and "educated" people today.
The Midnight - "Youth" got me here and it somehow feels so nostalgic without watching the baby foot steps of the computer's evolution. I would have loved the experience and excitement about the new era back then.
I thought he was going to talk about how in the future, an entire generation will spend their entire lives watching videos of people playing video games, regurgitating Wikipedia articles and doing top 10 lists.
Indeed, housewives with a computer are more successful than those without. They have a webcam.
This guy did a really good job of discussing the pros and cons of computers, and kind of forecasted what would play out over the next few decades. Well done!
Great find. The late '70s was a turning point in consumer high tech. In 1979, as a college journalist, I used a Video Display Terminal -- for all purposes a desktop PC -- for the first time. And I admit, when I saw this guy's image, I figured he was Goober and Opie combined. But he knew his stuff!
I would love to see the whole documentary :-)
JC Denton whatashame I'm curious, what makes you think this was filmed recently?
JC Denton whatashame what year do you think it is?
It was filmed in 1979; exactly as it says!
Yeah yeah yeah...3 day work week... I jsut spent about 30 hours this weekend trying to figure out why our production LDAP server was not sending back the same attributes as our QA server. Actualy, i spent about 25 hours trying to get to the point where I knew that was the problem, then five hours trying to figure out why. I still don't know. neither does the LDAP admin.
i love old videos like these. when i watch them, somehow i just feel so calm, like in a dream...
Mad respect for this lad. Except for easier working conditions, his prediction was 100% spot on.
Well, he's just a cyber-optimist standing for digital equality. And as he is an actual programmer, he's not predicting, it's rather a clear rational vision. Nothing mind-blowing, but surely nice to witness.
Computers have literally allowed me to thrive on a three-day work week. Awesome video.
Kyle Cook Listen to his point again. He (as many others) hoped that productivity gains made by automation will lead to shorter work time being a norm. It is not norm in any way.
Neven Palvović so what?
Thanks for sharing.
This man saw the future in respect to the age of personal computers. We are living the words he spoke about today.
your footage is incredible! thanks so much for putting it on youtube!
at 1:33 the guy talks about his 15 year old son, that son is 54 right now.
And the CEO of Spotify
Thanks for doing the math for us ;-)
Round about the time that this was made I had one friend in my year at school who wanted to do computer studies. He had to go to the local technical college to use "The" computer.
I purchased my first home computer in 1983. It was large, but I was hooked. They have come along way.
It’s refreshing to hear someone who speaks relatively eloquently by todays standards. A preoccupation with computers, as predicted in these interviews, has seemingly resulted in less verbal communication as a whole in society. This interview was not dominated by “you know”, “like” etc. Broadly speaking, we seem to have lost the art of every day speaking that is well within our human capabilities.
Funny to see the Apple II poster behind him :D They were selling like hot cakes for schools and and businesses at the time! :D
The apple II was, more or less, the first plug-n-play microcomputer.
HOLY CRAP!
This audio was sampled on The Midnight's KIDS album.
WHOooahh
Ha. Was just gonna post this. Just found this video today and I was like, I know I heard that line before. Now I know where it came from! Awesome. My favorite Midnight album!!
Start of video: "A computer is an educational device."
Future algorithm designers: "Well, we can't have that going on."
There was absolute magic of typing your name on the computer and result instantly comes up on the display, and not paper from a typewriter.
3 day work week
yeah, that would have been great
unfortunatly he missunderstood how we work
instead of using technoligy to simply simplify our lifes, we use it to press more stuff into it so that in fact we do more in the same time rather that enjoy the extra time to enjoy life
1) Work 3 days
2) Earn less
3) Buy less stuff & enjoy free time
4) ???
5) Profit
3 day work week... I bloody wish !
If I had a good 3-day work week job, I'd get another one to even more better myself. I don't have patience for people who don't want to do anything in their lives, except to whine about their condition.
I am 52 so I witnessed that era first hand. Apart from the well stated points and the early machines, what gets my attention though is that people looked older (though that's not exactly the word) back then, or I may say more down to earth in every way. The guy with a 15-year old son is probably no older than 45 but looks a great deal of a person who'd be 65 today. The man with the moustache is for sure around 25 years old but looks around 40. That was the world back then, much harsher and much freer than today's: at 20 you were supposed to have found a stable job and at 25 gotten married with one or two kids. Everybody followed the rules and that was fine, so fun time was well spent afterwards. At 45 society expected you to be completely settled down and already starting to plan on your retirement. Sure, times have changed and one can't extrapolate that easily, but those are the basic outlines. "Old-fashioned"? "Patriarchal"? Maybe, just like today's society expects you to not have any kind of norm and organised lifestyle past 50, question everybody's sexuality in the name of "freedom" (but more akin to the Inquisition) and dress like an idiot at any age banning good taste.
I remember in 1983. My 1st purchase Tandy PC-2 computer. A year later purchase a book nearly mastered BASIC language. I thought for sure my future was in computers but it didn't happen.
Except that that "tedium", those repetitive jobs that have been lost with the advance of computers have provided a friendly, personal, and manageable life for people -- one that didn't exhaust all our mental resources and suck us dry as today's jobs do. They were jobs that encouraged us to practice being human, to reserve the best side of us for things that truly matter, nature, friends and family.
Check out the movie "War Games" (1983) starring Mathew Broderick and Ally Sheedy for a look at the excitement of the first home computers and beginnings of the internet when people were just learning about passwords and modems and how much "fun" hacking could be. Great time capsule - and very good movie too with a still relevant message.
... and the series "Whiz Kids" from the same year, with Matthew Laborteaux
I just rewatch that movie for the old hardware.... 8" floppies, haha
Crazy fact: the word "user" only became the standard way to refer to somebody using a computer as a result of the movie "Tron" in 1982. Before that it was only one of many terms in common parlance, along with "computer operator" and "computerist". Those other terms disappear rapidly and are pretty much gone by 1985.
And all that even though TRON flopped very hard and not that many people watching in the theater or on TV.
"A computer has never really obsoleted a job that didn't need to be obsoleted." That is fantastic.
The interviewees were spot on! Interesting look back in time.