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CHAPTER 12.3

THE e REVOLUTION: COLLABORATION
SERVICES, B2B, GATEWAYS

I’ve often wondered what older people must feel when they experience the
benefits of today’s technology and look at it in the face of what they grew up
with. For instance, I’m talking about my 90-year-old mother-in-law, who mar-
veled at being able to face this week’s 95-degree temperatures by throwing a
switch on her air conditioner. This—by a woman who can remember when she
didn’t have electricity.

But now I’ve reached that stage of my career and my life where I marvel at
where we have brought communications and computer technology, while feeling
a bit threatened by it all.

Punched Cards and Paper
You see, I was introduced to the world of computers back when we communi-
cated to these devices via punched Hollerith cards. The computer regurgitated its
holdings in boxes of wide, fanfold sheets of paper that had rows of holes on both
sides and alternating green and white bars across the sheets. Oh! Those were the
days, my friend.

I survived the breakthrough of keying directly to tape. I exalted in moving to
time-share computers, with direct input from a keyboard. And in the early 1980s,
I was an early convert to personal computers—starting with a trash-80 (TRS-80)

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