21–30 of 35 posts
https://ethw.org/First-Hand:No_Damned_Computer_is_Going_to_T...
The article shows up here fairly regularly. I mainly bring it up as the computer was developed by Sperry, and it really is a good read about an early tech project.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Makes you question how productive we are in the computer age... The difference is that modern society isn’t optimized for productivity, it’s optimized for consumption and attention. 30 years ago you could go days without seeing ads, now companies send notifications to the nuisance devices in your pocket and on your wrist. It’s no wonder we have a harder time focusing and accomplishing things. Even being aware of th…
> modern society isn’t optimized for productivity It's optimized for profit. Ideally these would be one in the same. In any case our productivity is easily an order of magnitude greater today than it was 100 years ago. The lack of technical progress into our legislatures and courts even though we currently poses the ability to afford the same order of magnitude improvements is a curiosity and implies there's a form o…
It wasn’t optimized for profit 30 years ago..?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> modern society isn’t optimized for productivity It's optimized for profit. Ideally these would be one in the same. In any case our productivity is easily an order of magnitude greater today than it was 100 years ago. The lack of technical progress into our legislatures and courts even though we currently poses the ability to afford the same order of magnitude improvements is a curiosity and implies there's a form o…
> It's optimized for profit. It wasn’t optimized for profit 30 years ago..?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> modern society isn’t optimized for productivity It's optimized for profit. Ideally these would be one in the same. In any case our productivity is easily an order of magnitude greater today than it was 100 years ago. The lack of technical progress into our legislatures and courts even though we currently poses the ability to afford the same order of magnitude improvements is a curiosity and implies there's a form o…
> It's optimized for profit. It wasn’t optimized for profit 30 years ago..?
It was a very long time before I connected “Rand” to Research And Development.
The founder of Sperry Corp is this guy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elmer_Ambrose_Sperry who has an incredible dossier of inventions to his name and his son Lawerence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_Sperry was an aviation pioneer and inventor who invented the first guided missile, autopilot, and much more, as well as being accredited to starting the "Mile High Club". I'm reading the Elmer Sperry biography cur…
I worked for Sperry Univac 1974-79, in Halifax, Montreal and Calgary. I was an "SA", Systems Analyst at the service of the Sales team. It was a lot of fun. The Univac salesmen were the cowboys that didn't fit in at IBM. When preparing benchmarks, money was no object, we had lavish expense accounts. In the Oil Patch I saw $100K deals signed during coffee break. One of Univac's problems was the proliferation of operati…
Here's the manual.[1]
Amazingly, the descendant of EXEC 8, OS/2200, is still a maintained product, over half a century later.[2] There's even a roadmap out to 2033.
[1] https://archive.org/details/bitsavers_univac1100tiveReferenc...
This happened at the time when Germanium transistors were hand made, and quite unreliable, less reliable that even vacuum tubes. Magnetic core was much more reliable than either.
I worked for Sperry Univac 1974-79, in Halifax, Montreal and Calgary. I was an "SA", Systems Analyst at the service of the Sales team. It was a lot of fun. The Univac salesmen were the cowboys that didn't fit in at IBM. When preparing benchmarks, money was no object, we had lavish expense accounts. In the Oil Patch I saw $100K deals signed during coffee break. One of Univac's problems was the proliferation of operati…
I have some great memories - first time seeing whales just off Newport Beach stands out.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> modern society isn’t optimized for productivity It's optimized for profit. Ideally these would be one in the same. In any case our productivity is easily an order of magnitude greater today than it was 100 years ago. The lack of technical progress into our legislatures and courts even though we currently poses the ability to afford the same order of magnitude improvements is a curiosity and implies there's a form o…
> It's optimized for profit. It wasn’t optimized for profit 30 years ago..?