How Computers Transformed Baby Boomers

theodp writes "Newsweek's Steven Levy takes a look at how the baby boomer generation formed our tech landscape. Many of the realities boomers grew up with are today's metaphors, including cut-and-paste, the origin of which the 56-year-old Levy had to explain to 20-something Google employees. Levy cites two texts as crucial in pushing the boomers' vision toward power-to-the-people computing — Ted Nelson's Computer Lib/Dream Machines, which inspired Mitch Kapor, and the January 1975 Popular Electronics, which got Bill Gates jazzed. You kids might want to check out Dad's bookshelf — used copies of Computer Lib are going for $130-$225 at Amazon."

I've got a copy

I had no idea that CL/DM was selling for so much. I just checked my shelf, I bought a copy for $18.95 in 1992 at the local university bookstore - the sticker's still on it.

I wonder why it's so expensive? The book is terrible, virtually unreadable. Ted Nelson is a nutcase by all reports. Look at the repeated failures of his Xanadu idea.

I guess I should probably sell it; it has no value to me and $150-200 would be pretty nice.

Re:I've got a copy

It has less to do with him being a nutcase and more to do with the stuff he was rambling on about
being well ahead of it's time. Heh... Some nutcase-you're using the same stuff he's talking about
in that flip-flop book to make the post calling him a nutball- it's just not the full monty as it
were. Hyper-G was closer, much closer, but they made a mistake in making the reference implementation
proprietary, whereas NCSA made the first HTTP server effectively open source and the child of that
implementation is the #1 web server right at the moment.

Scrollbars

Did baby boomers use scrolls [squarefree.com], too?

Re:Scrollbars

Only the ones with rich parents. The rest of us had to make do with clay tablets.

Re:Scrollbars

Yeah, if you're middle class. The rest of us had to draw on cave walls. :P

Re:Scrollbars

Oh, yes. Old-fashioned typewriters had cylinders to wrap paper around, and the typewriter users had to roll the paper around by hand.

The title is reversed... Sheesh, editors.

The story is how BABY BOOMERS SHAPED COMPUTERS. The summary makes no sense with the current title.

Re:The title is reversed... Sheesh, editors.

I don't know, after the cyborg revolution the computers will need something to feed on, and what better than old people, the same people who invented computers to begin with?

This Just In--

Apparently the Boomers were responsible for everything, including all technology! Nevermind that your parents don't know the first thing about computers.

I've *done* cut-and-paste...

...and it works spectacularly well.

The modern version works like this: you need a photocopier, your source material, a pair of scissors, and a stick of solid glue. Photocopy all your source materials. Cut them up. Stick them onto a blank piece of paper in the order you want. Photocopy. All the seams miraculously vanish, and you end up with an extremely professional-looking end result.

It's a great deal easier than scanning and using a DTP package, it's faster, and it can also produce better results depending on your photocopier and scanner. I wouldn't use it for anything that needed to be stored for long periods of time --- your template is fragile and will fall apart if stored --- but for quickly putting together posters, exam questions (I inherited the technique from my father, who was a teacher), simple fliers, news clipping collections etc, it's first rate.

Don't get glue on the photocopier plate. It'll never come off.

In other news

Many 19th century inventions invented by 19th century inventors. Film at 11.

I call "B.S." on the "cut-and-paste" example...

...cut-and-paste, the origin of which the 56-year-old Levy had to explain to 20-something Google employees

I call B.S. on this one. Anyone dumb enough not to figure out where "cut and paste" came from doesn't deserve a job (must less a promotion to second grade).

Re:I call "B.S." on the "cut-and-paste" example...

I call B.S. on this one. Anyone dumb enough not to figure out where "cut and paste" came from doesn't deserve a job (must less a promotion to second grade).

Well, I can't speak to 20-something google employees, but when I acquired a 1930's Underwood typewriter a couple of years ago, the 12 year old son of a friend looked at it and asked what it was. I asked him what it looked like, and he replied that it looked something like a keyboard. He didn't know what a typewriter was.

Admittedly the kid is not the sharpest knife in the drawer, but I suspect that he's reasonably representative of his peer group.

Now that I think about it, the second graders might do better than a 12 year old. They're not heading into that teen recalcitrant thing and their imagination hasn't been spiked yet.

Bullshit.

cut-and-paste, the origin of which the 56-year-old Levy had to explain to 20-something Google employees.

Is he trying to claim 20-something Google employees don't know what scissors and glue and typewriters are? That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard.

Ralroads and electricity were much bigger

Railroads and electricity made much bigger changes in people's lives. Before railroads, most people spent their lives within 50 miles of their birthplace. Before electricity, it was, well, dark at night almost everywhere. Huge amounts of effort went into activities like basic cooking and cleaning clothes.

The changes between 1850 and 1900 were far, far greater than those between 1950 and 2000. In communications, in 1950 we had radio, television, teletype, and telephones. Even newspaper delivery via broadcast radio fax, although that never really caught on. Most important info was getting to its destination fast. Most of the communication things you can do today, you could do in 1950, but more expensively.

levy

Steven Levy deserves a lot of credit for his book Hackers, which was the first place to publicly discuss "the hacker ethic [wikipedia.org]." He really "got" a lot of the things that journalists today still don't get. You can disagree with a lot of what he says, and his "ethic" list is a little goofy, but as a "third" generation hacker (someone who grew up hacking on an Apple ][e), I found his interpretation of what was going on in the golden age deeply insightful. IMO, "computer journalism" has never really produced someone like him again -- today it's all David Pogue type "gadget reviewers" who really don't get what was, and still is, revolutionary about computing and the people involved in it.

Time to feed Mr Fusion...

And hop in the DeLorean... we're going back to 1975 to make sure Popular Electronics never prints that issue...

A Naughty Word

Wait... did I read that right? Did Bill Gates say "iPod"? Ooooh... you're on enemy territory now!

And I walked uphill to school both ways

Copiers. What copiers? I started my first engineering job in 1973. Copies were made with carbon paper. If it was really important there was the "Ozlid" process on thermal paper IF you could get the supervisor to approve it. Otherwise I used white out, correction tape, and cut slivers of the previously typed document to make a new version to give back to the secretary (remember them?) to retype. Give it to the secretary more than twice and she let you know what she thought about you, your family, and various barnyard animals you may or may not own (or know).

Not your fathers' boomers

I feel it should be pointed out that there are Boomers and then there are Boomers. Many of the most influential Baby Boomers for personal computers were born more or less in the mid fifties. They were barely teenagers when Woodstock happened and they became eligible for the draft just around the time America left Vietnam. To call them Baby Boomers isn't exactly wrong, (some demographers call them Generation Jones, but it's all bullshit anyway) but to lump them in with those "damned self-important idealists" as some of the other posters are doing is unfair, since by the time these guys came of age, the idealism had already begun to go the other way.

Let me get this straight...

The 'Facebook' generation is calling the 'Boomer' generation self-absorbed? Honestly, is there anything more self-centered than MySpace and Facebook?

Sell Dad's back issues??

"You kids might want to check out Dad's bookshelf -- used copies of Computer Lib are going for $130-$225 at Amazon."

Just for the record, kids - you try pulling this shit and Dad will spank your arse, no matter whether you're bigger than him now or not.

It is clear

That there is more to baby boomers and computers than meets the eye.

confusing title

Okay, cool, but I had to read this a couple times to understand just what or whom was transforming what or whom.

Maybe it's just that I'm tired, but the poorly worded title caused me to take much longer than I would have liked to read the blurb for this story.

With that in mind, wording these titles correctly isn't just an issue of pedantry; it's a readability problem.

Can't resist...

Didn't he find it odd that people who actually ran computer companies couldn't see it that way? "There's some benefit to youth," he says. "It's a lot like physicsEinstein saw relativity, the others didn'tbut then he didn't understand quantum dynamics, that next generation came along, and he became the old guard.

I wonder if Gates realizes how much this might apply to his company (old guard) versus open source / open standards (next generation)?

Meh. I imagine he pays someone to write his crap, anyway. He could certainly afford it, with what he spends trying to hold progress back.

Oh my.

including cut-and-paste, the origin of which the 56-year-old Levy had to explain to 20-something Google employees.

I guess all that drinking 19th century wines and fucking whores on piles of $100 bills must have erased their memory of kindergarten.

when will telephone numbers die?

Speaking of anacharisms, why do we still have telephone numbers at all? They should be hidden like IP numbers are hidden beneath web addresses and domain names. people who work exclusively with cells pretty much do that now. After the initial connection, you just automatically add the clller to your directory.

most people bored my "old stuff"

As a boomer I was bored when my parents or grandparents were told me how they did things in their time. I'm sure digressing about pubch cards, floppy disks, and command lines must bore the hell out of most kids these days.

Slide Rules - why did we bother?

I have a collection of slide rules which includes the model of Pickett 8" slide rule that was carried to the moon back in the day (not the actual slide rule, I hasten to add, just the same model). My 20-something son, who works as a network technician, asked me how they worked and so I demonstrated putting the "1" on the "C" scale over the "2" on the "D" scale and then the cursor over 2, 3, 4, etc. on the "C" scale to demonstrate multiplication.

He looked at it for a few moments and then asked, "Why didn't you just use a calculator?"

Re:As a member of "GenX" let me say ...

I can't wait until they all go on medicare/social security so I can pick up a second job to pay for it.

Re:As a member of "GenX" let me say ...

Christ what a narcissistic, infantile, self-important, hypocritical generation!!

I had the same thought while reading that article.

Where does Steven Levy think transistors came from? Or electricity, or math?

Re:Baby Boomers/Bummers - a Useless Generation

Simple reality. Most of the guys who designed PCs from the mid 70s to the early 90s were Boomers. Deal with it. Most of the people who designed the core technologies in the internet were Boomers.

Most of the people who _did_ stuff_ on that platform were Xers. Yep, I are one, right at the front of the wave.

Technologically, you're wrong. Now, in terms of finance and multigenerational ethics [msn.com] I might be more inclned to agree with you.

Re:Baby Boomers/Bummers - a Useless Generation

How could you not have an unhappy childhood, growing up parented by the generation behind us and surrounded by the current generation?

Re:Baby Boomers/Bummers - a Useless Generation

Respect. If we think it is bad now, wait until Gen-X wants to retire. We'll suffer the Boomer albatross around our collective neck. They'll be taking up all the seating at the Denny's Early-bird Dinners. Of course, not all Boomers are useless and ego-maniacal: some refused to drink the kool-aid (pun gloriously intended) of the self-serving counter-culture movement. However, these Boomers don't get inches in Newsweek or time with Katie on CBS, so the message is: we invented everything cool, and what we didn't create out of whole cloth wasn't awesome before we did it. I cite the impending stink-pile of "Across the Universe" as QED, and that ends discussion.