The growth of Information Technology since the early 1960s
An article Wednesday in Network World online (http://www.networkworld.com/slideshows/2009/081909-madmen.html), provides a look at how information technology could have saved Sterling-Cooper countless headaches. If you haven’t been following AMC’s “Mad Men” series, it portrays a Madison Avenue advertising firm, Sterling-Cooper, during the early 1960s. Wednesday’s article presents a slideshow showing how modern information technology would have assisted Sterling-Cooper; from using Microsoft Word instead of typewriters, to technologies such as telecommuting, teleconferencing, blogging and social networks, instant messaging, cell phones, Blackberries, and Photoshop. Presumably most people reading this blog entry either weren’t around or weren’t old enough in the early 1960s to remember that those features of information technology so prevalant now did not exist then, but going through the slideshow gave me pause to think how much computing technology and information management have changed the world in less than 50 years. Granted, there were mainframes and languages such Cobol and Assembler (and punch cards and paper tape!), but IT was not pervasive. The world has changed not just for IT professionals, but many facets of our daily life would be totally unrecognizable to Don Draper if he were to wake up in 2009. Sometimes its hard to remember that just 20 years ago the World Wide Web did not exist, and 10 years ago very few people used (big and bulky) cell phones. That 50 years ago if you made a mistake typing a document you couldn’t just backspace and rekey, you had to take out a fresh sheet of paper and start over. That graduate students hired typists to type their theses and dissertations. And that Bill Gates founded Microsoft in 1975, to develop a Basic interpreter for the Altair 8800! Things have definitely changed. In one form or another, computer technologies ultimately come down to managing information. How was information managed during the heydays of Sterling-Cooper? Using rotary phones and telephone switchboard operators, typewriters, and filing cabinets. Glad we’re not there today?
