Looking back

 It seems a custom to look back over the past year at the start of the next one, and I thought it might be amusing and interesting to do the same for this column, but going back rather further. I started with computers at university and wrote my first program on punch cards in 1972. In 1974, I started using a teletype and did some programming on-line. The family brought a Sinclair Spectrum in 1983 and our son enjoyed many happy hours playing games on it. It cost just under £200. Twenty one years later the changes have been dramatic. In 1979 our work computer had two disks the size of washing machines. I can carry all the data those disks stored around in my pocket. The modems we had then were big, heavy, slow and expensive. Now your little broadband one is small and cheap enough to be given away free with your connection.

The head of one leading computer maker said in1977, that he could not see the need for a home PC. His company no longer exists, because the world has changed and the PC is everywhere. However the biggest change, apart from the computer itself, now so small, powerful and cheap is the Internet. The technology makes it possible, while the web makes it useable by millions world-wide. The World-Wide-Web invented by Sir Tim Berners-Lee, a British scientist, working for CERN in Europe, is really very simple underneath, but until he and his colleagues sorted out what needed to be done, no one had a good way of sharing information easily on the Internet.

So next time when you are cursing a slow download, or cannot find a website, just think of the miracle that has taken place over the last forty years. It really is amazing. Have a Happy New Year.

John Kimberley

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