I come from a much older age and I was in UK and the UK government was considering use of the American made Cellphones and was thinking of changing from wired connections to wireless with a higher pay.
I resisted violently for user pays strategy and the caller pays strategy should be introduced and we were using bleeper for hospital communication which I hated.
I still use the land phone (read my piece on algorithm) and use cellphone for playing games when I am bored.
Reproduction
Bits & Bytes' of a Journey along the Digital Highway
March 28, 2018, 10:16 pmBy Nalaka Devendra
I ask: "Alexa, What's my Flash Briefing?"
Alexa - is not human. Rather, it is a small disc-shaped, talking computer, connected to the Internet, wirelessly.
I am not hallucinating; I am not under the influence of any mind-altering drug. I am not even watching a re-run of Arthur C. Clarke’s "2001: Space Odyssey", imagining that I am talking to HAL 9000. It is 2018 and I am sitting in my home/office.
Never in my wildest dreams did I foresee myself communicating with a talking computer !
The disc-shaped gizmo is the Echo-Dot 2, and Alexa is the voice activated service. Together, it can search the Internet and read to me, today's weather, headline news, play the BBC World Service radio, solve maths questions and a whole lot more, which I am yet to explore. It is a gift from a friend in the US.
In the beginning
Born in 1964, I lived the first five-years of my life, in Trincomalee. I also completed my Montessori education and started proper school, there. It was there that I was taught the most basic of communication skills - to talk, read and write.
My father made me a small, shallow box, or tray, with dark-blue varnish paper at the bottom covered with a thin layer of sea sand. It became the first writing surface I used. My parents guided my small fingers to form letters, both English and Sinhala. Later, when I started school proper in Grade 1, I wrote on a slate (gal-laella) with a stylus made of slate (gal-koora) to write letters and form words. Writing on paper and books, came later. Little did I realise that I would be using those fingers and stylus half-a-century later, on my Smartphone and Digital Tablet !
A luxury called a telephone
When we lived in the Naval Dockyard (Trincomalee), we had a telephone in each of the houses where we lived. But they were connected to a private exchange (PABX) which belonged to the Sri Lanka Navy. When we needed to call someone within the Dockyard, you lifted the receiver and asked the operator to connect us with the other party. It was the same, when we wanted to call an outside party, in Colombo. Long distance calls were commonly known as 'trunk-calls'. Direct dialling was non-existent. The phone instruments themselves were large, heavy and made of Bakelite, an early form of plastic.
We moved back to Colombo, during the latter part of 1970. None of the houses that we lived in, had a telephone. Owning a telephone was a great luxury. Perhaps the owners didn't quite think so, as the entire neighbourhood did not think twice about knocking on the door, asking permission to make a call! Whenever we moved into a new neighbourhood, the first thing we did was find out which house owned a telephone and get friendly with them. We need a point of contact, in case of an emergency. We finally got our own telephone in 1978/79, after we moved to Dehiwela. It was then that we experienced the full impact of owning a phone. We had the entire neighbourhood knocking on our door, irrespective of the time of day, wanting to make a call!
After all these years, we no longer need the 'operator at the exchange' to connect us to anyone. Our phones are no longer bulky. So it is ironic that no one even asks me for my home phone number anymore! Instead, they want my mobile number, my Skype ID and my Email Address. The new phones are slim and aesthetically pleasing. They fit into your pocket. There are 'hands-free' gizmos which means you don't even have to take out the phone from your pocket to answer it. The next time you see a person seemingly talking to himself, the chances are he is using his hands-free gizmo. Some people have more than one mobile phone - why, I do not know..
International Direct Dialling (IDD) is a basic feature today. It was not so, back then. Not even in the early '90s. I used to go to a 'communication centre' in Liberty Plaza to call my sister (studying in India) and my parents (living in Sharjah). I used to call them at night as charges were low. Even then, I paid Rs. 300 per minute and my wallet was much lighter, at the end of the exercise.
Technology blurred the lines
Thanks to the advancement of telecommunication technology, we don't even have to use conventional methods of talking to one another. We can talk (voice), video chat (live video) with people both within and outside the country, through the Internet. The cost is negligible when compared to the 300/- per minute I used to pay. In fact, you don't even need a telephone to talk to one another - just use your computer. My Smartphone, is in fact, a computer!
Today, the line between a computer and a phone is so blurred that it’s mind boggling. In fact, your average Smartphone is both. It's 'computer' component is a thousand times more powerful than the first general purpose computers I cut my teeth on, way back in the mid-1980s. My first (proper) job was working at a Government Corporation, where I was the sole employee of the Information Technology (IT) Department. Back then, it was simply called the 'computer department'. This was in 1985. The first computer there did not have a hard disk. All it had was a bank of 8-inch floppy disks. The computer itself, had a random access memory (RAM) of 64KB! The printer I had was a dot-matrix, 132-column printer. But we got a lot of productive work done with the limited resources at our disposal: on reflection, we probably used those computers to its full potential. I seriously doubt, if people use their present computers (including the ones inside smart-phones) for more than 30% of its potential.
Back then, when we wrote computer programmes (lines of instructions to get a computer to do our biding), we did not simply sit in front of a terminal and type away. We had to first plan and draw up a "flow-chart". Then, we had to plan our programme by writing a pseudo-code. It was only then, that we got down to the bare-knuckle typing of the actual code. But that was not the end: then came the programme compilation - a process of converting our typed instructions into a form which the computer could comprehend. All of this took time and planning. There were no short cuts or magic solutions. There were no 'apps and applets' to make life easy. Each and every mundane task had to be clearly spelt out.
My second job was at a company where we designed, developed and implemented turn-key (mostly bespoke) computer solutions for our customers. Although we had a large team of programmers, we had a limited number of computer terminals. As a result, we got very limited 'terminal time'. There was a time-table posted on the door, giving 30-minute slots for terminal-time. No one was allowed to book more than two slots consecutively. Each morning, there was a rush to book time-slots and much begging and horse trading among us to get as much terminal time as possible. For the balance of the day, it was back to paper, writing our code and checking and re-checking the same. Never did I visualize an era when we would have a computer on our tables, at homes or carry it around with you.
Pre 'Internet' days
My third job (also in the '80s) was with an IBM Business Partner. By this time, Personal Computers (PCs) were making its presence felt in the corporate world in Sri Lanka: not the sleek and ergonomic ones seen today but large, solidly built and heavy. It was also the era when we came face-to-face with graphical user interface (GUI) and the wonderful mouse! We, more or less, kissed goodbye to the 'command prompt' and text-commands.
Some of our customers needed specific and specialised licensed software, for their work. These specialised applications such as CAD/CAM, Statistical Analysis, GIS, Communication Software, etc. None of these were readily available in the local market. We had to place orders with overseas suppliers and wait (often quite a while) for the goods to arrive. As always, our customers expected the goods to be delivered, yesterday !
As the customer is 'always right', we had to find ways and means of getting the software to them, in the shortest possible time. Our office was located on the top-floor of a three-story building. The Internet was yet to come to our part of the world. The only practical way to obtain these applications was to connect to the supplier's system and 'download' it. Our office did not have an IDD facility. However, luckily for us, there was a 'communication centre' located on the ground-floor of our building. We rigged up a long (very long) telephone cable from our office to the communication centre and connected their telephone (with IDD) to our office and to one computer in our office. The IDD connection to our overseas supplier was not great and the line got disconnected several times. But we always managed to download the software and satisfy the customer. All this took place late at night. Needless to say we never got much sleep. Today, thanks to the Internet, all what we did, could be done in a matter of minutes. But back then, we had limited resources. But we were more innovative and found solutions in the most unexpected ways. Necessity is, indeed the mother of inventions.
And then, the 'Internet' came
I was there, at the official launch of the Internet in Sri Lanka. Yes, now I sound like a dinosaur. There were no dedicated lines (ADSL or Fibre) back then. We used a Modem to connect to our ISP. It made a god-awful racket while establishing the connection and the speeds were slow. But, we had access to a whole new world! At that time, my wife and I lived in a small flat. We shared a telephone line with our landlord. Before I went on-line', I would inform them, so that my Internet connection would not be interrupted.
Gradually Internet speeds increased and so did the technology. Today, you get high speed connections to your door-step. The latest is fibre-optic lines to your home. The all important MODEM is now a museum piece.
Soon we also had email and what a wonderful tool it was! We were able to communicate (and share pictures) with our friends and families all over the world. We thought that we had finally arrived. That we were now in par with the rest of the developed world. Boy, were we wrong ! Little did we know that a juggernaut called Social Media was barrelling its way towards us.
To my generation I say "We have come a long way baby !"
(The writer can be contacted at nalakadevendra@gmail.com)
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