Episode 29 features Sean Haas, host and creator of Advent of Computing, “a podcast about the shocking, intriguing, and all too often relevant history of computing. A lot of little things we take for granted today have rich stories behind their creation.”

We discuss the importance of computer history, our device history, and generally geek out about technology.

During the episode we cover:

  • Why Computer History?
  • First computers
  • Learning from Failure
  • Looking back to look forward
  • Starting Advent of Computing
  • The Altair
  • Xerox PARC
  • Early Internet
  • The mouse
  • The undocumented history of computers
  • Research
  • And much more…

Mentioned and Helpful Links from This Episode

AdventofComputing.com 

Support Advent of Computing on Patreon

Suggested Reading Mentioned in the Episode

Music created and provided by Henno Heitur of Monkey Tongue Productions.

–End Show Notes Transmission–

–Begin Transcription–

00:00:00:01 – 00:00:27:16
Agent Palmer
Previously on Agent Palmer. Com. After all this time, the right stuff still inspires, despite historical inaccuracies. A recap of the 2020 tour de France, which, you know, had highlights rivaling the 1989 tour. And I’m not sure what I learned from the friendship series, but I learned something and eventually I’ll figure out what it was. This is The Palmer Files episode 29 with Sean Haas from Advent of Computing.

00:00:27:21 – 00:01:08:40
Agent Palmer
We discussed the importance of computer history, our device history, and generally geek out about technology. Are you ready? Let’s do the show.

00:01:08:45 – 00:01:33:23
Agent Palmer
Hello, and welcome to the Palmer Files. I’m your host, Jason Stershic. Also known as Agent Palmer. And on this 29th episode is Sean Haas, host of Advent of Computing, a podcast about the shocking, intriguing and all too often relevant history of computing. A lot of little things we take for granted today have rich stories behind their creation, which is a portion of what Sean and I discuss.

00:01:33:28 – 00:01:55:45
Agent Palmer
It will come as no surprise to those of you that have followed my blog that I myself have an interest in the history of computing, which is why I was excited to find Sean’s podcast, quickly became a subscriber, and was honored to have him on this show to share stories of our own computing history, as well as discuss the importance of looking backwards.

00:01:55:50 – 00:02:24:38
Agent Palmer
The technology that we use on a daily basis should not be taken for granted as often as it appears to be. So conversations about the importance of that history, like what you’re about to hear, and podcasts like advent of computing that detail in chronicle that history are an important part of understanding where we came from, where we are, and where we might be heading before we get into it.

00:02:24:43 – 00:02:46:07
Agent Palmer
Remember that if you want to discuss the episode as you listen or after, you can tweet me at Adrian Palmer, the show at The Palmer Files and Sean at Advent of Comp. You can also hear advent of computing wherever you are listening to this show or just visit Advent of computing.com. Email can be sent to this show at the Palmer Files at gmail.com.

00:02:46:07 – 00:03:01:25
Agent Palmer
And don’t forget, you can see all of my writings and rantings on Agent palmer.com. So without further ado, let’s boot up and get this conversation run.

00:03:01:29 – 00:03:08:20
Agent Palmer
Sean, where does the interest in computing come from? Like, let’s just start from the beginning.

00:03:08:25 – 00:03:32:00
Sean Haas
Oh, that’s not a softball question. So I guess the extreme beginning is just all my life computers have fascinated me. So when I was growing up, my dad had a degree in SES that he got in like the 80s. So in the house we didn’t really have a new computer, but we had my dad’s old, 80 clone.

00:03:32:00 – 00:03:54:09
Sean Haas
So a fancier PC, pretty generic. And ever since I was a kid, he’d be doing something on it and he’d let me come sit with him and play with the computer. Just really simple games. I remember we used to play this Donkey Kong clone that was we had monochrome screen, so it’s just text characters in black and amber.

00:03:54:14 – 00:04:21:05
Sean Haas
And so ever since then, I’ve always just been fascinated with like, well, what is this box? What what can we get out of the box? And it really started kicking into high gear once I got into like middle school and started getting educated enough to, you know, read at a higher level, understand, like logically what’s going on. And I started I know it takes a while sometimes.

00:04:21:05 – 00:04:35:35
Agent Palmer
Sure. Yeah. No, I mean it’s not like a, it’s not like a switch. Right. And no, you know, we’re you’re talking about a PC clone. So it’s not like we’re in the golden age of like your computer does everything for you even if you don’t know how it works.

00:04:35:36 – 00:04:59:40
Sean Haas
Exactly. Just to be clear, this was I’m I’m relatively young. I’m in my mid 20s now, which feels old to me, but that’s not actually very old. So by the time I was using this computer, it was already very obsolete. But my family didn’t have all the money in the world to get a very fancy new computer, so it kind of turned into my computer once the family got a nicer one.

00:04:59:45 – 00:05:25:31
Sean Haas
So I was just kind of let loose on it. And I had all of my dad’s old textbooks from when he went to college. Decades ago at this point. So I taught myself how to use DOS and how to use a PC, taught myself to program a little bit, which I started out with Lisp, which was a horrible decision in retrospect, because if you’re familiar, that is a very, very difficult language and it looks nothing at all like other programing languages.

00:05:25:32 – 00:05:29:48
Agent Palmer
So did you switch to basic? I’m guessing quickly? Well.

00:05:29:52 – 00:05:57:32
Sean Haas
No. So I got into Lisp and then one of my friends introduced me to C sharp. And okay, the computers at school I was able to set up like Dot Net studio or whatever and learn C sharp, which was a little bit easier than Lisp. Not I didn’t have a traditional path and C programing. And then just from there I started learning more and more once I had more access to computers.

00:05:57:32 – 00:06:23:10
Sean Haas
As I was growing up and getting into high school, and eventually got a job as a professional programmer, and since then I’ve been embedded in the IT sector. But all along the way, I think mainly because of how I got into computers, I was always interested in older systems because, you know, it’s really amazing what we can do nowadays, but really not much of it is new.

00:06:23:10 – 00:06:47:31
Sean Haas
It’s just a lot more stuff. And so looking at computers and programing kind of puts you in this analytical mindset, right, where you get to think about everything you’re doing. So that doesn’t really flip off all the time. So it’s the kind of thing where you sit down and you’re trying to like, write an essay for school and you’re thinking like, why is this working this way?

00:06:47:31 – 00:07:03:54
Sean Haas
Why is this text editor 80 columns wide or whatever? And then that takes you down the deep, dark rabbit holes and eventually you start realizing like, oh, well, this is there’s all these remnants that have been built up over almost 100 years of development.

00:07:03:59 – 00:07:21:20
Agent Palmer
Yeah, I, I, I have a similar story, except that in my case, as a middle class family, I asked for AI because I’m in my mid to late 30s, but I don’t know where mid ends anymore.

00:07:21:25 – 00:07:22:25
Sean Haas
Somewhere in the middle.

00:07:22:25 – 00:07:49:50
Agent Palmer
Yeah. So, I asked for a Nintendo or in any s whatever, one of the two, maybe both. And what I got was a PC, which was probably a hand-me-down from something or whatever. So, I if I wanted to play a game console, I had to go to a friend’s house. What I had was a PC when no one was interested in them.

00:07:50:02 – 00:08:17:23
Agent Palmer
So I quickly learned a little bit of basic, I mean, that was a DOS computer through and through, and it was like, well, I am it’s amazing how far I’ve come because I, I, I have a hard time remembering any of my DOS commands I like, which is weird because it was like, if the way to navigate for the longest time.

00:08:17:28 – 00:08:19:27
Sean Haas
Yeah. Yeah, sure.

00:08:19:27 – 00:08:46:43
Agent Palmer
And, you know, I hold on to PCs and I’ve, you know, I was a hybrid marketing IT guy for a very long time, and I was only in that I was only eligible. Like, I’m a communications major by trade, like with the degree hanging on my wall. So I’m the marketing fits the IT part was just because I had taught myself some web code.

00:08:46:48 – 00:09:24:51
Agent Palmer
Just, you know, literal HTML, CSS, and a little bit of, you know, maybe some scripts and other than that, I had been taking apart and rebuilding and or improving and or. Well, I have all these parts. Can I put them together, Frankenstein ING these pieces together. And it was like you when when you once you start down that road and I, I’m sure there’s people listening to this that know someone like, oh, if I have an old PC like I can just give it to or I have an old laptop, I can give it, I’m that guy.

00:09:24:56 – 00:09:36:35
Agent Palmer
So like, you just end up with things and then like, people find out. So like, look at my worst. I had like 17 towers in my basement in various disrepair because then you end up with.

00:09:36:35 – 00:09:38:38
Sean Haas
Like two relatable. Yeah.

00:09:38:43 – 00:10:16:08
Agent Palmer
So so and and I, I did downgrade but like I taught myself the it part of being in that position because of just like knowing things and testing them out. And they looked at in that regard, teaching yourself computing and it is very scientific. You learn a lot from failure. You learn from failure than anything because what happens is you hook something up and it works and you go, well, why does that work when when something doesn’t work, it’s very obvious.

00:10:16:12 – 00:10:21:06
Sean Haas
You break something catastrophically and can never replace it. Yep.

00:10:21:11 – 00:10:50:43
Agent Palmer
So, like, that’s where I come in, right? And I, I yeah, I, I, I, I think I’ve stunted my growth as far as PC gaming. Like there are certain games I have not gotten past, I will always go back and play quake. Always. That will always be a game for me. Never in the history of anything will I ever not have a computer that can’t run Quake or Duke Nukem 3D, or the original Diablo or Warcraft two Tides of Darkness?

00:10:50:47 – 00:11:17:23
Agent Palmer
Those early 90s, those mid 90s games are the pinnacle for me, and I know graphics have gotten better and but like, that’s it for me. However, I understand things have moved along and I got to a point, which is actually how I get to listening to your show. I got to a point in the last 5 to 10 years where I was like, all right, my job is mainly the web.

00:11:17:28 – 00:11:46:45
Agent Palmer
I mean, I’m marketing for the web. I’m not doing any traditional marketing, my side hustle as a blogger. And then, you know, getting into podcasting and social media is all web based. So I went down a this is I need to learn about how we got here. And I end up with books like, hackers and books like Where Wizards Stay Up Late and all of these origins of the internet type books.

00:11:46:50 – 00:12:06:36
Agent Palmer
And then I start to think about, like, the personalities. Right? So I read the jobs book and I read was his autobiography. I, I read that gates book that was written in the early 90s. That is such a I don’t like it’s such a revisionist history. Even at the time it was written.

00:12:06:41 – 00:12:25:36
Sean Haas
That’s that’s the thing with a lot of computer history books. And I actually, I think on my last episode, I was at a party where I was actually getting kind of mad at, the book fire in the Valley for having inaccuracies in it. But sometimes people just don’t show their work in pop history stuff or biographies and.

00:12:25:42 – 00:12:56:24
Agent Palmer
Yeah, and so all of these things build and, you know, at the same time, you know, I mean, I always enjoyed, but Pirates of Silicon Valley or whatever that little mini series was, and I like I appreciate it. And as a, a nerd of the Uber kind, I guess that’s like, I won’t touch a mac because I don’t appreciate the esthetic I want to know what I want to tinker, like I want to be able to tinker.

00:12:56:24 – 00:13:14:59
Agent Palmer
And you will never be able to get me in an Apple product. I mean, I’ve I’ve dealt with them. You in it. You kind of have to work both sides of the brain, so to speak. But, so I just kind of got into, like, where, where are we getting like, where is it all coming from? And how did we get here?

00:13:14:59 – 00:13:42:56
Agent Palmer
And where are we going? Because it’s in our I mean, it’s just a general history thing like look back and you can kind of see where we’re going. And so like I end up finding your show and I’m like, well, this is a, this is a guy who gets it and I’m it’s and I thank you. And well, you’re doing the research to a point where, like, you’re telling me stories I know and adding in details I don’t, which is what I so appreciate about it.

00:13:43:00 – 00:14:14:19
Agent Palmer
It’s like I’m I’m an informed listener. Right? I’ve read some of the books you’ve read or I, they’re on my list of to read. And it’s just like, I’m excited because I like the details. I think I like the details, especially in the history of computing is everything. It’s why we end up with people that jumped to 16 bit over eight or like, you know, the, why, why, why all of the screens are black and green instead of black and orange?

00:14:14:19 – 00:14:42:44
Agent Palmer
Because that was a thing for a little bit. There could have gone either way. I mean, that could have gone either way. But there’s a there’s a definitely a, intersection where you’re going the other way. And, I just I’m fast. I’m, I’m still like that student that’s like, I want more. It’s all interesting. There’s. I think, you know, I’m we’re I’m I’m running Windows 10, and I skipped Windows 8.

00:14:42:44 – 00:15:06:55
Agent Palmer
But why why was that a thing I did? Like I know what the articles are, but in ten years, there’s going to be a book about the mistake that Windows 8 was, right? Like, we know this is going to be a thing. So I’ve been kind of following along, but also being behind, like I was just like everybody else, almost everybody else in the world.

00:15:07:09 – 00:15:09:32
Agent Palmer
I held on to windows XP way too long.

00:15:09:37 – 00:15:13:49
Sean Haas
Windows XP was the best. It just worked that it did everything you wanted it.

00:15:14:02 – 00:15:31:55
Agent Palmer
It did everything I wanted and then some. Like I knew how to use it. I got comfortable with it. All of the commands were ingrained in my head and and just like dos, I am now forgetting all of those commands.

00:15:32:00 – 00:15:34:28
Sean Haas
It’s the vicious upgrade cycle, right?

00:15:34:33 – 00:16:04:42
Agent Palmer
It really is. But you like. So I went the a first. I went internet before I went to a hardware and computing. And you know, I, I definitely appreciate, you know, the grace hoppers and like the classic computing and even the, the, the pre electric, you know, pre-digital computing. But like is it all exciting to you. Like is this like the world’s my oyster?

00:16:04:47 – 00:16:13:40
Agent Palmer
I, I’m excited to learn about IBM. I’m excited to learn about Intel like bring it all on pretty much.

00:16:13:45 – 00:17:00:30
Sean Haas
So when I first started the show, I was kind of concerned that there wouldn’t be that many topics to do, but there’s there’s so much out there. And like, like I mentioned, just very briefly, there’s at least 100 years of history that’s led us up to modern day what computers are. And it’s the kind of thing where once you start doing the research and start looking into it, it works so much and you run to so many things that either reference older technology or older developments, or once you look at enough stuff, you recognize like, oh, well, there, there, here’s this paper in the 1960s is talking about Arpanet, but this is actually the same

00:17:00:30 – 00:17:19:52
Sean Haas
as this 1950s report that some dude wrote at the height of the Cold War. And it it’s kind of it’s like a tree, right, where it just branches out so much and you get so far out into the weeds. And it all of it’s interesting because all of it ends up being connected in really weird ways that you don’t expect.

00:17:19:57 – 00:17:38:27
Sean Haas
And just like you were saying, looking to the past gives us an idea of the future, but it also shows us why we’re here and why certain things are the way they are and why we don’t have certain things. And it just you kind of have to take a holistic view of everything to start to understand the bigger picture.

00:17:38:32 – 00:17:58:15
Sean Haas
And I kind of try to do that with the show. The primary goal is, and I, I think you’re a beautiful case study for this to get people more interested in the history of computing, because it is a really important topic, and it’s a really complicated topic that a lot of people, it might not be accessible to them.

00:17:58:15 – 00:17:59:04
Sean Haas
Right?

00:17:59:09 – 00:18:28:05
Agent Palmer
Yeah. So I mean, I think for me it falls in line with I, before I was into computers and I mean, they were always around. But before that my first big love was NASA. Like that was like the thing. And growing up a shuttle child because that was. And you’re part of that too. Like that was our generation up.

00:18:28:10 – 00:18:36:53
Agent Palmer
Shuttle missions, while they were exciting to watch launch were boring. They were not the flashy Apollo. I mean.

00:18:36:53 – 00:18:39:26
Sean Haas
Yeah, it’s a workhorse. It’s a shuttle.

00:18:39:26 – 00:18:52:01
Agent Palmer
Yeah. So I, you know, I’ve, I’ve read and you, I’ve gone down the road of trying to find as many autobiographies as possible. I want the source from.

00:18:52:01 – 00:18:54:34
Sean Haas
Yeah. You have to get as close to primary as you can.

00:18:54:41 – 00:19:29:21
Agent Palmer
And if there is just something that relates because and I haven’t found the book yet, that’s like, oh, no, computing is there because NASA pushed there are some little there are like there should be like volumes on what NASA did to further computing. And it doesn’t seem to exist like in Lost Moon, which was renamed Apollo 13 to be in line with the film.

00:19:29:25 – 00:20:02:29
Agent Palmer
They talk about some of the engineers in and around MIT that helped design some of the circuits that they utilized or re utilized or repurposed to help get those three astronauts back. But outside of like, oh, the astronauts were talking to the engineers because they wanted switches in this position, you don’t really learn anything about how much they overlap.

00:20:02:29 – 00:20:17:31
Agent Palmer
And obviously, you know, they’re there’s all it’s nothing but overlap, especially in that era of the 60s where computing is probably growing in leaps and bounds behind the scenes.

00:20:17:33 – 00:20:25:48
Sean Haas
Like 60s and 70s, where where it seems to explode in just how much advancements are going on. Right? Yeah.

00:20:25:48 – 00:20:59:43
Agent Palmer
And it’s I look, I, I still stand in awe when people go like, yeah, like that first computer was ten grand, but wow. Like like it’s a hobby for me. But you make any of these devices ten grand and I am out like so the fact that like we talk about like with reference, almost like the Homebrew Computer Club and what those guys did, the Altair was not a cheap hobby project.

00:20:59:47 – 00:21:18:36
Sean Haas
No, no, not at all. So that was even like, that’s the thing with the altar specifically, is it was so deceptively marketed because the base system is like thousands of dollars in 1970s dollars, and it has 256 bytes of memory. Yeah, yeah.

00:21:18:38 – 00:21:19:16
Agent Palmer
No, you can’t do.

00:21:19:16 – 00:21:20:02
Sean Haas
Anything with that.

00:21:20:08 – 00:21:49:22
Agent Palmer
No, I mean, look, I’m. I feel neglectful of all of my machines when I end up with, like. Digital clutter is what I’ll call it. Which we’re all I think most people are guilty of this in some things. I think some of the more, I’m going to call myself more of a busybody. I’m more guilty than most, right?

00:21:49:27 – 00:22:26:58
Agent Palmer
In fact, anybody who’s listened to this show, knows that when I had, the designer for my website on, and my logo, Ryan called my desktop icon salad. And there’s a reason for that is because when Ryan and I worked professionally, he would see that I had multiple screens and icons going across them because it was such a, like, fast paced, like, you have to get stuff done that I’m building like three things in Photoshop, and then I save them to my desktop and then I move on instead of moving those things around.

00:22:27:03 – 00:22:28:01
Sean Haas
It’s there now and.

00:22:28:01 – 00:22:54:03
Agent Palmer
That digital clutter just stays. And then I just select it all and move it into a folder called Clean Up. And I will get to that later until I don’t. And then eventually you just get a new computer like, which is horrible. But when we’re talking about the Altair being 256 bytes, like, I feel like I’m letting someone down from the past who’s like, what are you doing?

00:22:54:03 – 00:23:17:53
Agent Palmer
All of that space, you’ve got 15 copies of that one image because you keep re downloading it and not moving it. And it’s like, come on. Like I and I’m reading these things with like especially like those like those days went in, in some of the early, computing when they’re building programs and they only have like five bytes to work with.

00:23:18:02 – 00:23:30:39
Agent Palmer
But that’s this, that. And the other thing, and they need to save some room for something else. They’re like squeezing every even like half bit they can. And I’m like, it’s space.

00:23:30:39 – 00:23:49:36
Sean Haas
Whenever that’s okay. We really do. We benefit so much from things that we just don’t think about, right? It’s kind of like the old aphorism, we very much are standing on the shoulders of giants, so that we can like for an email and have ten copies of. Yeah.

00:23:49:36 – 00:24:24:20
Agent Palmer
We’ve like we’ve come a long way and look, I like to think that being informed means I utilize these things better. And I think to a certain extent it does. Like I can troubleshoot my PC and that’s, you know, I think that’s something that everybody should be able to do. I and while cars have become more, I’ll say electronic and computerized and, and unfortunately most cars are now taking the Apple approach of their all closed systems.

00:24:24:20 – 00:24:33:57
Agent Palmer
And they’re not they’re not open. But like being able to troubleshoot your computer is what changing your oil was in the 80s. Like everybody could do it.

00:24:33:59 – 00:24:35:07
Sean Haas
Think that you should be able to do.

00:24:35:07 – 00:24:48:33
Agent Palmer
It’s a skill you need to learn and like I ran it and it’s one of those scenarios where like, you’re like, I, I’m not going to ask you any horror stories, but like, I.

00:24:48:33 – 00:24:48:58
Sean Haas
Have so.

00:24:48:58 – 00:25:11:46
Agent Palmer
Many, but that’s the problem. You shouldn’t it shouldn’t be like, why is this computer not working? Because there’s a hundred Chrome tabs open and 15 pop ups like that. That’s your answer. How can you not see that? And like, so we are standing on the shoulders of geniuses, but we’re dripping like our ice cream cone on their face as well.

00:25:11:46 – 00:25:13:29
Agent Palmer
While we’re up there.

00:25:13:34 – 00:25:43:14
Sean Haas
But you have to. I definitely agree with you wholeheartedly. At my job, I, I programed so I don’t have horror stories from that and I more have horror stories of why is this code still here? This hasn’t been touched in ten years. This is very unsafe kind of things. But I guess the other perspective is, yeah, we are kind of just, oh, we were frivolous with the amazing technology we have.

00:25:43:14 – 00:26:10:43
Sean Haas
But in a lot of ways that’s kind of the dream that people have been working towards. Right. And I think we see that, like, especially in the 70s and 80s, when people are really starting to come to grips with the idea of, well, we can make a $5 microchip now, we can maybe get a computer that someone could buy, and trying to figure out what a personal computer would look like and how to get computers to the masses.

00:26:10:43 – 00:26:32:58
Sean Haas
And we’ve hit that point now. So I feel like a lot of people who were part of that process would be really excited that we can kind of just trash all over this amazing, basically supercomputer technology we have everywhere, every day. But it is kind of a shame. There’s a little bit of guilt there, I guess.

00:26:33:12 – 00:27:03:27
Agent Palmer
Well, it it goes to the reason that the Macintosh and the early apples were beige, because jobs wanted them to be home appliances, and we have them like that’s what they are now. They do have stains from being spilled on like a countertop wood. They do have little things or like, oh, it overheated or like like these are now living, breathing appliances like everything else.

00:27:03:32 – 00:27:09:28
Agent Palmer
This is as ubiquitous now as the refrigerator is.

00:27:09:33 – 00:27:47:32
Sean Haas
And yeah, and it took so many steps to get there. And that, I don’t know, I just think the whole there’s a few really big stories in the history of computers, right? One of them’s the internet. That’s the big one. But the other one that I really like is the drive towards being able to have an appliance computer that you can spill coffee on, and that it’s neat because that goes back so far and there’s been so many little steps, like in the last in the early 60s at MIT, when they had like one, maybe two computers, they got a new one, right?

00:27:47:37 – 00:28:13:09
Sean Haas
And that ended up being the first computer that got a video game written on it. Spacewar! And one of the people who wrote Spacewar! Years later was talking about how when they got that new machine, it was simple enough that one person could operate it, and it was almost like they were able to step into this temple where some religious relic was kept away, because up to that point, you don’t touch the computer.

00:28:13:09 – 00:28:13:40
Agent Palmer
No, you.

00:28:13:48 – 00:28:37:40
Sean Haas
You have technicians that do that. And just even that one step of going from this is a system that needs a team of people to run it to, oh, only one person can run this very, very expensive piece of equipment that we don’t have that kind of huge leap today. But all of these just steps add up, and eventually we get the appliance computer that we can spill coffee on whenever we want.

00:28:37:45 – 00:29:10:05
Agent Palmer
Yeah. I when you go back and read the internet and computing histories, especially when you’re talking about like the the PDP ones and like the yeah, the what what most people wouldn’t consider digital computers. Right. Like these are massive machines with either punch cards or rolling tape. And it’s like, well, that’s not digital. It is internally. But like to the user interface.

00:29:10:05 – 00:29:10:25
Agent Palmer
It’s not it.

00:29:10:25 – 00:29:12:02
Sean Haas
Doesn’t act digital.

00:29:12:04 – 00:30:00:54
Agent Palmer
Though. And so, you know, my father tells stories about going to computing class and learning punch cards. And it’s like, there there is a there is an inherently mean streak in me that I agree with. Mark Andreasen. And if anybody’s not familiar, he’s one of the main engines and personalities behind Netscape. But he had said if we had kept the entry level to the internet at technical prowess, the internet would probably be the utopia it was supposed to be.

00:30:00:59 – 00:30:31:16
Agent Palmer
And when we lowered the technical barrier to AOL and just click and you’re on, we opened the gates for everyone and Utopia disappeared. Now, that’s not what he said verbatim, but that’s one of the beliefs he has. I have read in my history of the internet that as someone with that technical prowess, I would have loved to have been a part of whatever that utopia was going to be.

00:30:31:20 – 00:30:36:55
Sean Haas
Oh, yeah, I, I think I can sympathize with that one.

00:30:37:00 – 00:31:13:56
Agent Palmer
It’s it’s and I’m not I’m not saying like it’s, it’s just for the elite. But there was a time maybe before AOL or right before AOL when it was prodigy. And again, you needed commands. It. Prodigy had some click and point and click stuff. But it was very text based and that early text based stuff, you know, look, people have been spamming email since the moment email existed, right?

00:31:13:56 – 00:31:27:49
Agent Palmer
Like it’s not like it would have been a utopia in the sense that, like, all of the things that we now complain about wouldn’t exist. No, those things were born right at the very beginning.

00:31:27:54 – 00:31:50:22
Sean Haas
They just be less of them. Well, in what’s fun about that point is the internet was originally meant for the elites. The what’s kind of funny is today we think so much like, oh, the internet’s a great equalizer, right? Because it connects everyone. If you can get close to a wire, you can connect to the internet. Some cases you don’t even need a wire.

00:31:50:22 – 00:32:13:53
Sean Haas
Now. But a lot of the original papers on Arpanet, what the network that became the internet talk about how it’s for government, research and military. Yep. No one else will ever be able to access this network. If anyone does, it’s a federal felony. And then now anyone can get it.

00:32:13:57 – 00:32:40:24
Agent Palmer
Yeah. And look, we owe it to a lot of those private contractors at universities. And and then the contractors for the military that were working on it that were like, well, it’s not a federal. I’m allowed in. So while I’m in, I’m going to tinker. And that’s a good like how we got to where we got now is because people went didn’t go home at five.

00:32:40:29 – 00:32:42:01
Sean Haas
Yeah. People push the rules.

00:32:42:11 – 00:32:59:47
Agent Palmer
And they you know, they stayed and they tested things and look, I, I don’t like Moore’s Law ended, which was a big deal for those of us that grew up believing that it would always.

00:32:59:58 – 00:33:01:10
Sean Haas
Yeah, always double double.

00:33:01:10 – 00:33:24:20
Agent Palmer
In speed and, you know, get less and and that would always be a thing. Although when you think about it, at a certain point it can’t get any smaller. I mean, not to us as humans and what we can actually perceive. So at some point, yeah, it had to end. I didn’t think it would be in my lifetime for some reason.

00:33:24:21 – 00:33:29:53
Agent Palmer
That was one of those big like, oh, well, that’s.

00:33:29:58 – 00:33:32:38
Sean Haas
Is it over our computers over now is that.

00:33:32:38 – 00:33:50:32
Agent Palmer
It. Like so and and it’s but it is one of those things where I guess the reverse of Moore’s Law is happening with devices, not necessarily what’s inside them. Phones are now getting bigger.

00:33:50:37 – 00:33:51:29
Sean Haas
For some reason.

00:33:51:38 – 00:33:59:55
Agent Palmer
Yeah, yeah. Like, look, I’m, I have a collection of old smart devices as well. The original.

00:34:00:00 – 00:34:02:15
Sean Haas
You mean like this? You mean like this?

00:34:02:20 – 00:34:06:46
Agent Palmer
I have a whole. Yes. Yeah, that. So that’s a but an iPhone 3G.

00:34:06:46 – 00:34:12:55
Sean Haas
I’m guessing iPhone 3G. Okay, I actually was just pulling a bunch of music off of this last week.

00:34:13:00 – 00:34:46:11
Agent Palmer
So I have the iPhone 3G. I have a bunch of, Android devices. I have one of the original Verizon droids with the flip out, keyboard, which is very cool. And but my favorite is the original Moto X by Motorola because as a, as a phone, it’s slightly smaller than the Apple 3G s you’re holding, and it’s slightly thinner, but it does everything else I want, and I, I thought that was the perfect phone.

00:34:46:15 – 00:35:05:25
Agent Palmer
I was like, this is great. And then they came out with the next one and I was like, this looks big. They’re like, I know it’s here. Yeah, well, why is it bigger? Why are we why are we going this other direction? And look, it’s it’s not for me. I get that now. Like, it took me years to figure out, like.

00:35:05:25 – 00:35:16:41
Agent Palmer
Oh, because my first inclination is to reach for an actual keyboard. I prefer a keyboard and American.

00:35:16:41 – 00:35:17:46
Sean Haas
Feel to do one.

00:35:17:46 – 00:35:30:07
Agent Palmer
That’s what I want. So my phone’s being small is because I’m not doing everything else on it. This is for phone calls.

00:35:30:12 – 00:35:32:32
Sean Haas
Maybe emails if they’re short?

00:35:32:32 – 00:35:34:45
Agent Palmer
Yes, maybe keeping an eye on Twitter.

00:35:34:45 – 00:35:35:47
Sean Haas
Maybe we’re just old.

00:35:35:56 – 00:36:06:21
Agent Palmer
Yeah, well, that’s the thing. I. The more you dig in to computing’s history, the older you feel, regardless of what your age is, because you pick up I and I, I challenge anybody out there under the age of 40 to pick up a book on even like Jobs or Gates, like, pick up one of the biographies and read what those guys were working with in the late 60s and early 70s.

00:36:06:26 – 00:36:31:56
Agent Palmer
And then think about the phone in your pocket. And I challenge, like, we’ve come a long way in a very short period of time, but it kind of ages you out a little bit because you’re like, well, they would kill for this kind of power. Like the computing power is really good. And while, you know jobs, may he rest in peace.

00:36:31:56 – 00:36:48:57
Agent Palmer
And gates is still here, they’re still kind of, I still look at those two as like the people of my generation that formed everything. There are other names, but, like, those are the rock stars.

00:36:49:01 – 00:36:54:08
Sean Haas
Yeah, they’re not the flashy ones.

00:36:54:12 – 00:37:32:28
Sean Haas
That’s broadly accurate. Like, I think one of the big things is and it does come back around to technology like smartphones is a lot of this is very consumer facing product. Right. So they get bigger because ooh, big phone. Very cool. Right. And the we see the same thing everywhere. Computers get cooler looking RGB keyboards and everything. But when you’re looking at someone like gates or Jobs, they’re the reason they’re so well known is because they’re really good at figuring out this is what people want.

00:37:32:32 – 00:37:54:59
Sean Haas
I think jobs a little more than gates should always. Yeah, like like with the iPhone or with the Macintosh. He was very quick identifying this is going to be what people are going to want in next year, whereas gates is more just I always think of him as more behind the scenes. But they’re they’re the big success stories.

00:37:55:01 – 00:38:07:42
Sean Haas
Whereas a lot of the people who actually innovated a lot and made the huge leaps are a little less well known because they were, you know, less public facing, less money oriented.

00:38:07:51 – 00:38:37:16
Agent Palmer
Yeah. That brings me to my favorite discussion point in the history of computing, which is Xerox Parc, because you can’t talk about the history of computing without Xerox Parc. So first off, in all of your research, I’m sure for the show specifically, Xerox Parc has been a huge like almost data point.

00:38:37:16 – 00:38:39:10
Sean Haas
It shows up everywhere.

00:38:39:15 – 00:39:07:36
Agent Palmer
Okay. It’s literally but we get we get either, networked computers, we get the mouse, we get the graphical user interface. All of these things come out of Xerox Parc. And one of my favorite games is imagine if Xerox had known, had figured out what they had. Like they knew what they had. But imagine if they had actually gone like if the Alto went to market they went.

00:39:07:36 – 00:39:08:21
Sean Haas
The next step.

00:39:08:21 – 00:39:10:05
Agent Palmer
Yes. It it’s.

00:39:10:05 – 00:39:37:22
Sean Haas
Yeah. That there’s, there’s actually this great book called Fumbling the Future which is about the perfect title. It encapsulates Xerox but it’s about the development of a lot of the products at Xerox and then how they failed to become actual products. But everything that went on at Xerox Parc, I don’t know how any of that happened, because it’s they didn’t so they didn’t invent the mouse from whole cloth.

00:39:37:22 – 00:39:53:06
Sean Haas
They didn’t invent the graphical user interface or anything, but they took it from research lab into something. They they synthesize it all into something that could very well be a really successful product, but never took the next push.

00:39:53:20 – 00:40:21:31
Agent Palmer
No. So then you end up with that’s why Pirates of Silicon Valley. And while I get the because that’s one of the more well known like, fictional dramatizations of the history. And I know in that jobs talks about like, we’re pirates, but like, yeah, the treasure was Xerox Parc for everyone. Microsoft, Apple. It doesn’t matter. Xerox Parc was the treasure.

00:40:21:36 – 00:40:44:39
Sean Haas
They they figured it out over the course of like five years and then stopped. Yeah, but it’s why I one of one of my favorites is the Xerox note taker, which. So that’s all technology. It was a portable computer the first pluggable. So it’s basically a desktop PC with a screen and it has a handle on it. So it’s portable.

00:40:44:44 – 00:41:11:16
Sean Haas
But that was created in 1979. It’s the first computer ever built that uses an 8086 processor, which is the lineage of what everything uses now. Yes. So it has that point going for it. It had a mouse and a detachable keyboard. Right. So that’s already getting more modern. Had a touch screen display. It was a CRT but still a touch screen.

00:41:11:28 – 00:41:39:12
Sean Haas
It had a graphical user interface. It had batteries and it’s all portable. And what’s what’s wild. That I think fully encapsulates why Xerox didn’t succeed in the market is they made ten of these prototypes, and I think the estimated cost was like 50 grand or something wildly expensive machines. But you could run a graphical user interface on a battery and take it around with you.

00:41:39:17 – 00:42:11:13
Sean Haas
And they made those at their think tank in Palo Alto and then flew out to Xerox main office, which some like New York, and they’re showing it off to the executives as, hey, we have a finished product, we just need to put put a little polish on it, get some marketing stuff turned up, work out manufacturing, and we can make a killing because people at Parc saw the exact future they like, looked in their crystal ball and were able to identify exactly what a computer would be in like ten years.

00:42:11:17 – 00:42:20:13
Sean Haas
And in the executives, you’re just like, yeah, it seems boring. I don’t get it. Why would anyone want this? Yeah, well, and then they just scrapped the project.

00:42:20:13 – 00:42:49:51
Agent Palmer
There is so much like the to the innovators that did it and to the few executives that got it, there were thousands upon thousands of not only executives but middle managers who didn’t get it. I mean, jobs is in charge of his company. So he gets to say, this is the computer we’re going to make as a home appliance.

00:42:49:55 – 00:43:18:43
Agent Palmer
But there were tons of engineers and innovators on lower levels across the country and in basements trying to do the same thing where maybe we would have different names to put up on the computer, Mount Rushmore now, but there were middle managers and executives that were like, how much did that cost to make? It’s not worth it. Like that will never turn a profit.

00:43:18:43 – 00:43:20:17
Sean Haas
Too expensive, too big.

00:43:20:29 – 00:43:56:22
Agent Palmer
Yeah. We because the more I’ve read and I don’t know if this is something that you’ve come across, it wasn’t it was it feels almost kind of like hivemind ish. I don’t know if there were. I mean, I know everybody was into trade publications and obviously I’ve, I’ve never actually done the research to go back and read them, but it feels like a lot of people had similar ideas in that, especially in the early 70s to early 80s, of what computing could be.

00:43:56:29 – 00:44:23:42
Agent Palmer
Now, not everybody has the technology or the wherewithal or the thing or the resources, even because Funding’s only takes you so far. Yeah, to get there. But like, everybody’s kind of everybody kind of saw where we were going. And what’s what’s unique in reading these histories is a lot of these histories were written right close to the border of the history happening.

00:44:23:47 – 00:44:56:20
Agent Palmer
A lot of these books and these, you know, histories are written in the early 90s and mid 90s. An entire history has happened since these like I mean, it’s one of those things where there are books and I think, hackers was written hackers, heroes of the, Digital Revolution, I think is the full title, by Steven Levy, that is written in the mid 90s, 96, 97, where the Wizards Stay Up Late is written.

00:44:56:20 – 00:45:27:54
Agent Palmer
I actually don’t remember when, but the amount of things that I’m aware of that have happened since these books last page happened is astonishing. Like we’re in a, you know, and digital archivists are is a whole different thing. They’re trying to digitize what’s on the internet. But how we got here and like from the mid-nineties to here, like, that’s kind of undocumented to a certain extent.

00:45:27:54 – 00:45:35:11
Agent Palmer
Like we all understand the dotcom bubble. We all understand AOL and Netscape. But there’s so much more. There’s a lot.

00:45:35:11 – 00:46:05:52
Sean Haas
Of it that’s hidden away. Right. And getting back to your hivemind point, there’s this interesting, there’s a couple of different theories on overarching how history works. So there’s the great man theory, which is like eventually someone shows up and they change everything and that’s it. They are the embodiment of change. And then there’s the tides and forces, which is, you know, over time the right parameters happen and everything tips over eventually.

00:46:05:52 – 00:46:32:35
Sean Haas
And you get x, y, z, and in my research, it seems like there’s kind of both things going on. It’s more like you have a cadre of great people that show up that may or may not know each other, that may or may not interact. And you also have just the right situations where they’re all able to work on a very similar thing or see the same future, like take the mouse, for instance.

00:46:32:40 – 00:47:00:32
Sean Haas
There’s Doug Engelbart, who, along with Bill English. So they Engelbart designs and Bill English finishes engineering and building the first computer mouse. That’s what we would recognize as a mouse. It’s a box with a button on it that you move around at almost the same time. In the UK, another engineer designs the first trackball, which is the exact same thing just flipped upside down.

00:47:00:32 – 00:47:23:19
Sean Haas
Yeah, but because of how that that trackball was designed for a radar system, which was a government secret. So there’s no way that he could have known about Doug Engelbart or Doug Engelbart could have known about the trackball, but they both developed basically the same thing, just ones flipped over at almost the same time with Mike, 4 or 5 years of each other.

00:47:23:24 – 00:47:40:10
Sean Haas
And there’s so many things where it’s very similar technology that happens at wildly different locations with very little connection to each other, but it’s the same kind of environment. And so there’s there’s some collective unconsciousness there, I think.

00:47:40:14 – 00:48:11:27
Agent Palmer
Well, I think secondarily and or maybe primarily at the end, the issue becomes, at a certain point, all engineers talk about problems. Yeah. And engineers prefer to talk about problems because it’s something talk talk good stuff. Well, the good stuff is done. Like there’s like, you know, okay, we’ve got flow through tube one and week flow through tube two.

00:48:11:32 – 00:48:31:04
Agent Palmer
We talk about tube one. We can’t make it any better. It’s as efficient as it gets. But tube two, we can maybe plug a leak. We can find a leak. Like there’s something to talk about there. So I feel like as these systems mature, all of those engineers, I pick on engineers a little bit, but like, it’s just scientists in general.

00:48:31:04 – 00:48:36:33
Agent Palmer
Like, let’s talk about what’s broken. Let’s talk about what we need to improve. And so I.

00:48:36:39 – 00:48:38:32
Sean Haas
Get very human to complain.

00:48:38:41 – 00:49:22:40
Agent Palmer
Well, that’s, that’s that’s the other side of it. Right. Like it’s kind of both things. Like we want to talk about what’s broken because it’s our job to fix it, but it’s also cathartic to talk about what’s broken. So this is going to work out really well. It’s just kind of. Yeah. Look, before, we get too far in, has there been any one story or thread or rabbit hole in the episodes you’ve done where you were, where you lost track of time and you just end up like, oh, it’s 3 a.m., I have to be a work in a few hours like it has.

00:49:22:44 – 00:49:30:31
Agent Palmer
Like, what was the one that like where time disappeared the most as far as like the research you’ve been doing.

00:49:30:35 – 00:50:09:50
Sean Haas
A lot of these are like that. The the biggest one is probably the most obscure one. So one of the things about the show that I try to convey is that the big history is cool, right? Steve Jobs, Bill gates, cool guys, cool machines. But the most obscure things are oftentimes the most interesting and oftentimes really important. So the the one topic that’s definitely sent me down a very deep, deep rabbit hole is actually edge notched cards, which I did a mini episode way back at the very beginning of the podcast about.

00:50:09:55 – 00:50:37:11
Sean Haas
And what’s wild about them is there’s almost no scholarly research on them, or any kind of academic writing on them. Since 1958, but they were still in use up to the 80s. So there’s this huge chunk of history that is only documented in archives and private collections, which has. That’s the kind of thing where I’ve spent countless sleepless nights looking into that.

00:50:37:11 – 00:51:03:53
Sean Haas
And eventually I’m going to do I’m planning on doing a very more in-depth treatment about the topic, because it’s really wild, since it’s essentially a database that’s all on paper. It’s not a punched card, but it uses similar tooling to a punched card, except no machinery. So you have a stack of paper that using a needle, you can do filter operations, you can sort things, you can do complex logic operations.

00:51:04:04 – 00:51:27:47
Sean Haas
It’s a database. And there’s some decks that you can find if you go to the right place, private collections that have hyperlinks implemented using just pen and paper and some holes. But there’s no research on it. So you really, really have to dig. And I, I’ve spent a lot of time digging into that. And like I said, eventually that’s going to become a big thing.

00:51:27:52 – 00:51:32:47
Sean Haas
But right now that’s still on like step three of 100.

00:51:32:52 – 00:52:01:26
Agent Palmer
Are you I and we’ve kind of touched on it a little bit, but are you at all shocked or surprised by how little information there is? Like you’ll be researching any number of things. And I’m a very big believer in like reading begets reading and research begets research. Like you go down, read any biography and the subject you’re reading is going to be like, oh no, I totally was influenced by so-and-so.

00:52:01:26 – 00:52:33:51
Agent Palmer
So you go down that road. But like, are you amazed that you’re not the only one doing this? You’re not the only one. Like looking at this information. And there are people that are like, getting, like, advanced masters and graduate degrees that are doing similar research. And yet you’re finding these threads that are basically you there’s. And what I’ll do is I’ll make it an analogy, like, you turn off the road and there’s another highway.

00:52:33:51 – 00:52:46:29
Agent Palmer
Great. All this information on windows 95. And then you get to like certain technologies and you get off the off ramp and it’s like dirt road that disappears.

00:52:46:29 – 00:52:49:54
Sean Haas
And like that happens very, very often.

00:52:50:08 – 00:52:57:19
Agent Palmer
But it shouldn’t. Right. Like this is the this is recent history. We’re not talking about the Egyptians. We’re not talking about.

00:52:57:19 – 00:53:00:17
Sean Haas
Don’t talk to the people who did this. A lot of the times.

00:53:00:17 – 00:53:17:19
Agent Palmer
Yeah. So is it like, I mean, I, I, I’ve not done the research. I’m just reading some of the books like, but is it disheartening, is it upsetting? Like do you have an emotion when you like, turn down these roads and there’s nothing.

00:53:17:24 – 00:53:41:12
Sean Haas
It’s kind of a mix. So I think it’s not disheartening. I think it’s more exciting because that means there’s work to be done. You get to do something a lot more fun than just reading through some some texts. And there’s a lot of topics that are very, very well documented, like the development of Unix, the rise of the internet, anything around IBM or kind of Apple.

00:53:41:12 – 00:54:08:23
Sean Haas
Apple’s kind of hit or miss is very well documented. And that’s interesting. That’s kind of boring since the story’s been told ten different ways, but a lot of times, like the edge card thing, that’s really interesting to me because there’s so little information about it that’s been collated. Or another great example was when I did an episode on coherent Unix that lasted up until 1995.

00:54:08:37 – 00:54:39:12
Sean Haas
So very recent history it ended. The product stopped being so 25 years ago. Everyone involved is still alive. You could interview them. Very few people have. You could send them an email, can’t find their email addresses. And so there’s there’s no one text on coherent Unix. There is a few news articles. There’s actually a lot of Usenet posts which ended up being a very primary source.

00:54:39:17 – 00:55:03:47
Sean Haas
But besides that, it’s looking through old scans of articles, old scans of reference manuals, and Usenet and I, I don’t know, I, I think that’s a lot more fun than just reading a book that has everything put together for you already, because that means the work is done, whereas you can find something where you get to do fun, work.

00:55:03:51 – 00:55:44:03
Agent Palmer
No. That’s fair. I mean, the the journey is part of the end. Yeah. Like, so I understand that, it is there. I don’t know, a topic that it like is your favorite to go down. I mean, you’ve covered a lot in, you know, the origins of computing, so to speak. So is there, you know, are you is the open source movement something that’s, you know, as an example, more intriguing to you or.

00:55:44:08 – 00:55:56:22
Agent Palmer
I mean, I’m trying to put you on the spot, like, is there something that like, you know, that’s that would be very cool. That’s a road I want to go down versus look, I’ll take it all information’s information.

00:55:56:36 – 00:56:24:43
Sean Haas
Yeah. There’s there’s a couple. So I, I want to cover as much as I can because I think it’s a better use of my time to diversify the content I put up because a lot of why I’m doing this is so people can learn and people can get interested about different topics. The the very early internet is something that I will always love looking into because I have.

00:56:24:52 – 00:56:49:30
Sean Haas
So I have this big spreadsheet that I use to keep track of my episodes. Right? And it’s pretty basic. I have a date, the episode number, but the title is a quick description and a category, and then just tracking stuff. And one of the categories that I use is spooky. And that’s anything that has to do with the US government or military, but becomes big later.

00:56:49:45 – 00:57:23:26
Sean Haas
And those are that’s the early internet, Arpanet or right now I’m working on some material that’s very related to early programing languages that were developed only inside the military. And those are the kind of things that I will endlessly want to talk about, because there’s so much information that is not it’s put together. It’s like halfway put together, but there’s more and more that comes out as things become public domain or for your requests or filed.

00:57:23:31 – 00:57:32:17
Sean Haas
And it always feels it feels kind of subversive because it’s like, oh, I’m looking through these documents that say, declassified on.

00:57:32:22 – 00:57:42:00
Agent Palmer
It, I mean, this is, probably going to put you on the spot more than any other question. Is there a book in your future?

00:57:42:05 – 00:57:50:44
Sean Haas
I’m hoping for that. I’ve. I’ve been working on some plans. I’ll put it that way. I don’t want to give away anything too big.

00:57:50:49 – 00:58:22:31
Agent Palmer
No. That’s fine. It’s because you’re I, I appreciate the podcast and I understand all of the research that you’re doing, but, like, as as ubiquitous as podcasting may be right now, you’ll reach an entirely broader audience with a book right? So that’s and you’re like, I’m look, I’m always in favor of, doing one thing really good and then finding a way to use it twice.

00:58:22:35 – 00:58:27:38
Agent Palmer
Like, that’s always great. So that’s that’s that’s why I ask.

00:58:27:43 – 00:58:41:40
Sean Haas
Yeah, I am, I’m working on something. It’ll come out eventually. Very dependent on when I can get access to archives again. But there is something going on in the future. Nice. That’s not podcast.

00:58:41:44 – 00:59:11:50
Agent Palmer
Nice. Is is there a, language or software that you want to dive into specifically? Like you’ve done some mainly broad things? I operating systems is about is, kind of specific as you’ve gotten, but like, I don’t know, are you interested in, like, just individual software programs as well? Like, would that be, kind of.

00:59:11:55 – 00:59:40:08
Sean Haas
So I try to keep. Well, the things I try to do with every episode is it has to be something that’s connected to the wider world. And a lot of software is. But it’s hard to spin up because part of the research, part of it is having some kind of compelling narrative. Yeah. Otherwise it’s just like in 1978, the silicon production changed by 50%.

00:59:40:13 – 01:00:02:00
Sean Haas
So there needs to be something more than just data. And I feel like a lot of software, I don’t know, there’s some there’s some software that interests me, but not it. I feel like it doesn’t have the same big picture impact. A lot of times. One of the things that I have been going really in-depth on is my Intel processor series.

01:00:02:00 – 01:00:03:02
Agent Palmer
Yeah.

01:00:03:07 – 01:00:40:04
Sean Haas
And eventually that’s going to keep going and just keep going and going. I feel like that’s kind of the same there. It’s not software, but it’s a same similar kind of thing where it’s one thing that’s in-depth over time. But I should look into more software. I think I have some in my tracking sheets. The the other thing with doing episodes on specific software is a lot of times you get to the point where it’s like there’s one developer and one company, and they made a program, which is interesting, but they’re also just might not be very much material around it.

01:00:40:04 – 01:01:14:21
Agent Palmer
No. That’s fair. I mean, I, I think back to what I will call, family battle. Right. Like, anybody with any kind of technical proficiency has, has been the AI, the defacto IT person for their family. And I remember in about 2001 telling my mother, who owns her own business, I said, you have to move over to word WordPerfect is going to go away.

01:01:14:26 – 01:01:38:07
Agent Palmer
She’s like, no, I’m going to hold on to WordPerfect. And the last version of WordPerfect she had was in somewhere around then, because Carol had finally bought WordPerfect and brought it into the suite, and it was like at some point you’re going to have to move away from this and then, you know, you fast forward to like 5 or 6 years.

01:01:38:07 – 01:01:42:55
Agent Palmer
You go into like, you probably don’t need word anymore. Just move to Google or.

01:01:43:00 – 01:01:44:10
Sean Haas
Like in the cloud, you know.

01:01:44:10 – 01:02:10:15
Agent Palmer
Be in the cloud. And it’s like, I get it. My mother, the reason she held on to WordPerfect for so long was because she didn’t want change. She was like, yeah, know. No, I it works, I like it, I’m comfortable with it. The show and not everything’s created equal. Like we think, and I see we but in the general sense like go from a Google spreadsheet to Excel and not a lot changes.

01:02:10:20 – 01:02:22:19
Agent Palmer
But that’s not the way it was for a very long time. So moving from word to WordPerfect or vice versa, like there were drastic differences at one point. All right.

01:02:22:19 – 01:02:24:03
Sean Haas
But yeah, not so much nowadays.

01:02:24:03 – 01:02:34:12
Agent Palmer
No, I think we’ve I think everybody’s learned that the closer we can make it to uniform, the easier I can get people to switch.

01:02:34:17 – 01:03:02:24
Sean Haas
Yeah. Just imitate everything I guess. So I guess one software that I, program that I do want to eventually cover is Visicalc, which, speaking of spreadsheets, was one of the first big spreadsheet applications that was on a lot of different platforms. And that’s kind of has some big implications for like consumer software and kind of turning computers into more business oriented machines.

01:03:02:29 – 01:03:05:53
Sean Haas
But I don’t know, I haven’t done the research on that one yet.

01:03:05:58 – 01:03:13:25
Agent Palmer
Probably made a mistake. Like we should have kept it as a personal computer. We didn’t need to make it all business that was.

01:03:13:25 – 01:03:17:25
Sean Haas
Where business people out of it.

01:03:17:30 – 01:03:34:18
Agent Palmer
I mean, it would be a very different world if it was like, oh, for sure. This is, you know, because that’s one of those weird things where now we don’t think anything of it. Like, I have my work computer, I have my home computer, or for a lot of people it may be one in the same. Right?

01:03:34:18 – 01:03:59:46
Agent Palmer
Because you take it back and forth. It’s a laptop now. It’s portable. It’s. But like not so long ago, if you wanted to access a computer, you had to go to work in the early 90s, like work. You had a computer at work, like, yeah, computers were starting to get into the home, but they were more likely to be found in an American office than an American.

01:03:59:51 – 01:04:01:34
Sean Haas
Yeah, just because of price.

01:04:01:38 – 01:04:32:59
Agent Palmer
So, yeah, I look at it, this is a history that keeps going, and I, I applaud you for doing the work. No, no, it’s it’s it’s something that needs to be done because it’s a, yeah, it’s documentation that we will literally lose these the documentation that you’re talking about and the research that you’re doing, we won’t find it buried in 100 years.

01:04:32:59 – 01:04:56:30
Agent Palmer
Right. Like like, you know, in 200, 300, a thousand years, all of these computers are going to look relatively the same. And while there has been a massive change in what has happened in a short period of time, that’s not that’s good. That change is going to be lost to the ages. If the research is done now document everything.

01:04:56:38 – 01:04:59:22
Agent Palmer
Yeah, yeah. So yeah I.

01:04:59:22 – 01:05:00:13
Sean Haas
Think that’s.

01:05:00:17 – 01:05:01:17
Agent Palmer
Yeah that’s why it’s all the.

01:05:01:17 – 01:05:02:23
Sean Haas
Big points with the show right.

01:05:02:23 – 01:05:08:40
Agent Palmer
Yeah. And that’s why I appreciate the show. Like that’s, it’s it’s fantastic.

01:05:08:45 – 01:05:22:34
Sean Haas
I thanks I’m, I’m really glad other people like my work.

01:05:22:39 – 01:05:44:29
Agent Palmer
I don’t know why more people aren’t interested in the history of the things they use on a daily basis. That’s only a fraction of the interest that Sean and I take in the history of computing. But it does make me wonder. Interestingly, it’s not just computing as a subject, but reading and research that Sean and I have in common.

01:05:44:33 – 01:06:21:11
Agent Palmer
We’re interested in the why and the how. We want to know more than we do. That search for knowledge and that need to know will hopefully never fade. It is that kind of quest that is a lifelong journey of fulfillment with interesting stories, information and unique perspective that keeps us going. It also keeps us engaged and sustained. Information, by definition, is quote, what is conveyed or represented by a particular arrangement or sequence of things, unquote.

01:06:21:16 – 01:06:46:18
Agent Palmer
And with that in mind, I want to thank you for transmitting the information of this podcast to yourself. It may have been educational, it may have even been interesting. But above all, I hope that it was entertaining. Thanks for listening to The Palmer Files episode 29. As a reminder, all links are available in the show notes. And now for the official business.

01:06:46:23 – 01:07:08:06
Agent Palmer
The Palmer Files releases every two weeks on Tuesdays. If you’re still listening, I encourage you to join the discussion. You can tweet me at Agent Palmer, the show at The Palmer Files, and Sean at Advent of Comp. You can hear more of him on his show Advent of Computing, on your podcast app of choice, or on his website, advent of computing.com.

01:07:08:10 – 01:07:36:48
Agent Palmer
You can see all of my writings and rantings on Agent palmer.com, and all links to all of these things will be available in the show. Notes. Email can be sent to the show at the Palmer Files at gmail.com. If you have any feedback on this or any previous episode, or if there’s a topic or guest you’d like me to consider.

01:07:36:53 – 01:08:11:40
Agent Palmer
And you.

01:08:11:44 – 01:08:15:17
Agent Palmer
All right. Sean, do you have one final question for me?

01:08:15:22 – 01:08:22:14
Sean Haas
I do. What was your favorite computer staying topical.

01:08:22:19 – 01:08:51:20
Agent Palmer
So I’m torn between two. I had a compact Presario in college. That literally lasted for years. And then I brought it home after graduation, and it lasted six months and died. But it got me through. But it was it was like. And it was a big clunky, like Compaq Presario, like, this isn’t streamlined.

01:08:51:20 – 01:09:21:08
Agent Palmer
I, I don’t think I ever left. I don’t think it ever left my dorm. So that’s one. But I also had a Toshiba satellite more recently. RIP because Toshiba is no longer making satellites anymore. And that was the computer that I had when, I launched my blog and started, you know, kind of getting into indie podcasting.

01:09:21:13 – 01:09:59:29
Agent Palmer
And whereas the Compaq, The Battery died and it wouldn’t keep a charge. But that was the thing the satellite, one of the like defects for Toshiba satellites was that if the battery, it booted off the battery. So if the battery couldn’t keep it charge, you couldn’t boot it unless there was no battery in the machine. So for the last three years that I had that satellite, I didn’t have a battery in the laptop because it was completely drained and dead, and the only way to have it boot was to not have a battery in.

01:09:59:29 – 01:10:31:38
Agent Palmer
So was just like, whatever. But those two, mainly because they were workhorse PCs. I gamed on them. I served the internet on them. I you know, it was I wrote on them. I, you know, graduated college on one, I launched a blog in another. And when I launched that blog, I did all the programing on that. So, you know, I in fact, that computer is also the one where, like I learned, like I taught myself or re taught myself HTML from whatever I remembered from my GeoCities days.

01:10:31:38 – 01:10:59:01
Agent Palmer
So like those two PCs kind of or laptops got me to where I am right now. And I think they’re also the two laptops, which is one of the reasons. And while the satellite didn’t work this way, why I appreciate laptops in that. Like, you know, I’ve always lived in neighborhoods with old infrastructures. So it’s always nice to know that when the power goes out.

01:10:59:06 – 01:11:00:23
Sean Haas
Yeah, you can keep going.

01:11:00:28 – 01:11:09:38
Agent Palmer
Well or I can at least save things I don’t have to worry about. Like, oh, it’s now the Toshiba towards the end and I didn’t have a battery in it. It was like a.

01:11:09:42 – 01:11:10:54
Sean Haas
Full systems failure.

01:11:10:58 – 01:11:47:23
Agent Palmer
Yeah. That was kind of like an you know the other thing. And I joke about this now like the Compaq I don’t have anymore, but the satellite, I still do. And I could boot it up. I mean, I did reformat the hard drive and all that stuff, and I took it out and all of that somewhere on a ironically, as we talk about things growing, that harddrive just got copied over to a literal USB thumb drive because those are now bigger than that hard drive was.

01:11:47:28 – 01:11:48:31
Sean Haas
But.

01:11:48:36 – 01:12:10:56
Agent Palmer
The last time I turned it on, it suffered from the same problem it had for the last six months, which is how I knew it was on its last legs, which is it got really hot like that is a that is a laptop that if I plugged it in right now, five minutes from now, I could cook an egg on the keyboard if I wanted to.

01:12:11:01 – 01:12:14:33
Sean Haas
That’s not a very sustainable work environment, to put it lightly.

01:12:14:33 – 01:12:43:07
Agent Palmer
No, but those are the two like and I think my end. And now I’m thinking about my answer in that I think it’s what I do with them now. I’m now thinking of them in terms of being tools as opposed to something else. Right? As opposed to like, you know, that’s a cool hammer versus like, that’s a thing I built, right?

01:12:43:07 – 01:13:10:19
Agent Palmer
And it’s like, well, I built that thing, that house with that hammer. So that’s why that hammer’s meaningful. And so getting a college degree with one laptop, or starting my blog and getting into podcasting with one laptop, those are the two that stick out. Also, they’re the two I had the longest, the four year and that to Shiba, I believe lasted eight and a half to nine years.

01:13:10:23 – 01:13:24:33
Agent Palmer
I have to take like a look at some of the other things around. I might be able to like track it, but I think that computer lasted at least eight years, which is at least five years longer than it should have lasted.

01:13:24:38 – 01:13:29:29
Sean Haas
I mean, it does sound like it was breaking a lot, but it’s still pretty good.

01:13:29:36 – 01:13:47:26
Agent Palmer
Yeah, I mean, it still booted up like outside from the panic because that’s a panic, right? I mean, anyone who’s kind of worked and fiddled with computers when they won’t turn on. Yeah, that’s fine, because that means you can’t fake like, then it’s now we’re on hardware.

01:13:47:26 – 01:13:49:11
Sean Haas
And it’s beyond the pale.

01:13:49:16 – 01:14:17:16
Agent Palmer
So, when I, when I was like, oh, okay. I’ll just. It’s a last resort. I’ll take the battery out and see if it’s still boots. And it did. And I was like, all right, I can keep going. And then when it started, you know, radiating heat, it’s like, all right, I think it may be over. Yeah. But I that’s one that I just, I, I don’t know if I’ll be able to get rid of it.

01:14:17:21 – 01:14:40:23
Sean Haas
I think that’s a great answer. I, it really is to basically everyone. It’s the memories you make with the computer, right. Or with any tool. Because at the end of the day, it doesn’t really matter exactly what’s inside. There’s silicon in there somewhere. There’s some gold, maybe if you’re lucky. But you don’t look at that. You look at what you get done with it and what it helps you do.

01:14:40:23 – 01:14:47:01
Sean Haas
And I think that’s the big thing for everyone now is what you can get done with the computer.

01:14:47:06 – 01:15:05:57
Agent Palmer
Yeah. We and it’s, it’s this is where it all kind of ties back into the history. It’s weird to think that that’s what we think of computers now was 30 years ago. It was like, what’s this device do? Oh, I can connect to the internet. What’s the internet? Yeah. What happened to, you know, also the the language change, right.

01:15:05:57 – 01:15:10:25
Agent Palmer
Like 30 years ago was the World Wide Web. It wasn’t even the internet. There was a whole different thing.

–End Transcription–

This transcription was processed by PalmerTech 3.1 and may contain errors for HUMINT (human intelligence).