Digital Disruption and Techno Archeology

Feb 19, 20182 min read

Deviation Actions

Published: Feb 19, 2018

1.3K Views

I always have a problem at social occasions when people ask me "what do you do"? My usual response is to go "errr, well...". The problem is that people expect you to do one thing, train for something and do it; a job for life. But that's not how it's been in my career. The things I learned at university in the 1970s have been eclipsed by new technologies. There were no digital mobile phones back then, let alone phones that allow you to take photos with better results than many cameras.

So I had a think, and I've got what I do down to two job titles; "Digital Disruptor" and "Techno Archeologist"

A Digital Disruptor because I was part of the industry that delivered digital phones to the market place. Participated in adding data to phones and later, with my own company, showed how digital disruption was a form of technical evolution to be embraced by all.

A Techno Archeologist because I'm fascinated by what we did digitally years ago with so little. Moore's law is the observation that the number of transistors in integrated circuits doubles approximately every two years. But what we've chosen to do with those transistors is usually to make more sophisticated interface displays, faster communications and occasionally watch cat videos. 'Back in the day', astronauts flew to the moon with the most basic computers and I wrote programs for 64 kilobyte computers like the Commodore 64. That's kilobyte, not meg or gig!

So, now I have it. Two job titles to meet that "what do you do?" question at social events. All I need now are some really good parties to got to. Invitations welcome!!