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    Shift Happens: Essays on Technology
    Shift Happens: Essays on Technology
    Shift Happens: Essays on Technology
    Ebook163 pages1 hour

    Shift Happens: Essays on Technology

    By Gene Wilburn and Marion Wilburn

    ()

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    About this ebook

    Shift Happens is a collection of essays that chronicle the introduction and spread of technologies that have shifted and reshaped our lives during the past century.

    With examples principally from North America, the authors review the impact of new technologies from the perspective of two individuals who have lived during this time of immense change.

    Starting with the introduction of electricity and the rise of radio and TV, the book moves on to personal computers, the Internet, World Wide Web, streaming audio and video, artificial intelligence, and quantum computing.

    The authors, Gene and Marion Wilburn, are retired information specialists whose careers included managing IT projects, and establishing websites for their institutions. Both authors have written extensively and taught courses on information technology. *Shift Happens* reflects their personal experiences with the technologies of our era.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherGene Wilburn
    Release dateJun 9, 2020
    ISBN9780463550069
    Shift Happens: Essays on Technology
    Author

    Gene Wilburn

    Gene Wilburn is a Canadian writer, photographer, and computer specialist residing in Port Credit, Ontario, near Toronto. His work has appeared in Small Print Magazine, PC Week, Shutterbug, Infoworld, InfoAge, Toronto Star, Quill & Quire, Computing Canada, Computer Paper, Access, Here’s How! and Photo Life.He is the author of Northern Journey: A Guide to Canadian Folk Music on CD, Recreational Writing, and Markdown for Writers. He is a co-author of Red Hat Linux System Administration Unleashed, and he wrote the popular Linux for Newbies and Linux Inside columns for The Computer Paper (Canada). He is co-author of Shift Happens: Essays on Technology.

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      Book preview

      Shift Happens - Gene Wilburn

      Shift Happens

      Essays on Technology

      Gene Wilburn

      Marion Turner Wilburn

      2020

       Copyright © 2020, The Authors

      This work may be freely shared and distributed

      Table of Contents

      Introduction

      Electricity: The Spark of Modernity

      Life in the Dark Ages

      The Grid

      Transportation: The Great Escape

      Cars and Highways: A New Mobility

      Changed Landscape

      Romance of the Road

      Style, Comfort, and Power

      Smog: The Ugly Dragon

      Air Travel: Up, Up, and Away

      Telephone: From Socket to Pocket

      Walking the Talk

      The Smartphone

      Radio: The Tribal Drum

      Portables: Batteries Included

      FM: Smooth and Easy

      Ham and CB: Getting Personal

      Radio Today: Still Crazy After All TheseYears

      Television: The Fascination Box

      B&W to Colour

      Channels Galore

      Satellite TV

      CRT to Flat Screen

      Television Today: Fragmentation

      Music: Platters, Discs, and Streaming

      LPs and Tapes

      CDs

      MP3s

      Streaming Services

      Vinyl’s Revenge

      Big Bangs: Fission, Fusion, and Furore

      Satellites: Eyes in the Sky

      Space Program: Byproducts

      GPS Satellites

      Astronomical Satellites

      Remote Sensing Satellites

      Lasers, Microwaves, and Ultrasound

      Lasers

      Microwaves

      Ultrasounds

      DNA: A Game Changer

      Plants and Animals

      Humans

      Family Connections

      Molecular Medicine

      Reconstructing the Past

      Personal Computers: Power to the People

      Transistors: Silicon Valves

      Electronic Calculators

      DIY Microcomputers

      Consumer Microcomputers

      Business Microcomputers

      Computer Publications

      Computer Programming

      Obstacles: Vocabulary and Keyboards

      Graphical User Interface

      Linux and Open Source

      Internet and The World Wide Web

      Inception and Development

      Accessing the Web

      Searching the Web

      Web Interaction and Creativity

      Communication

      Communities

      Education

      Digital Publishing

      Web Commerce

      Cloud Storage

      Internet: The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly

      The Good

      The Bad

      The Ugly

      Internet Everywhere

      Into the Future

      Artificial Intelligence

      AI Anxiety

      Quantum: Qubits For Sale Or Rent

      Gaming: Living on the Edge

      Augmented Reality

      Afterword: COVID-19 Pandemic

      Transportation Infrastructure

      Communication Technologies

      Internet Misinformation

      Personal Health Technologies

      Contact Tracing

      Face masks

      DNA Technology to the Rescue

      Final Thoughts

      About the Authors

      Acknowledgements

      Further Reading

      Introduction

      Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic — Arthur C. Clarke

      Technologies shape us and our environment. They affect how we think about the world and our place in it. Beginning with stone tools, technology has shifted humankind’s ideas, perceptions, and abilities.

      Over most of the 14,000-year rise of human civilization, beginning around 12,000 BCE, the pace of technological change had been slow enough for people to adjust gradually to its impact. More recently, however, the pace of change has increased exponentially.

      Shift Happens is a collection of essays that chronicle the introduction and spread of technologies that have shifted and reshaped our lives during the past century. With examples drawn principally from North America, the authors review the impact of new technologies from the perspective of two individuals who have lived through most of this time of immense change.

      Starting with the introduction of electricity and the rise of radio and TV, the essays turn to personal computers, the Internet, World Wide Web, streaming audio and video, artificial intelligence, and quantum computing.

      The authors, Gene Wilburn and Marion Turner Wilburn, are retired information specialists whose careers included managing IT projects and establishing websites for their institutions. Both authors have written extensively and taught courses on information technology. Shift Happens reflects their personal experiences with the technologies of our era.

      Note: The use of I in the essays denotes Gene’s memories. Marion’s memories are identified by her name to avoid confusion.

      — Port Credit, Ontario, Canada, June 2020

      Electricity: The Spark of Modernity

      Electricity is really just organized lightning — George Carlin

      Life in the Dark Ages

      Try to imagine a world without electricity, electric lights, or power tools. Curiously, I experienced this in my early years. As a toddler in the late 1940s, I lived with my Swedish grandparents on their homestead farm in northern Minnesota, adjacent to the Manitoba border. With no electricity, our main fuel came from a woodpile set well away from the house. It was a comfortable, warm, home but without modern conveniences. My mother and grandmother cooked on a wood-burning, cast-iron stove with a reservoir at the side that heated water for dishes, laundry, and bathing.

      For entertainment, my grandfather, who knew a little English, read children’s books to me, while my uncle played guitar and sang harmony with my mother. Occasionally someone performed a piece or two on the pump organ. At night my mother read to me by the flickering glow of a kerosene lamp, which she would carefully wick down when I fell asleep. Although this was the 1940s, we were living in the equivalent of the 1900s.

      The Grid

      Although Thomas Edison created the first commercially practical light bulb in 1879, for most people, especially those in rural areas, electricity didn’t arrive until much later. It first came to towns and cities, then gradually spread to the countryside in what was called rural electrification. For some remote areas, electricity didn’t arrive until the early 1950s.

      The Canadian Niagara Falls hydroelectric generating station, built in 1906, began the spread of electrical power in Ontario. To this day, to the confusion of many, the hydro bill is not a water bill, but an electric bill. A similar spread of electricity occurred in the United States. During the Great Depression of the 1930s, President F. D. Roosevelt supported the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) initiative, which provided hydroelectric power to many states. Where dams were not feasible, provinces and states used fossil fuels to power electric generating stations.

      Electricity changed our mental landscape. Night no longer had to be dark and dangerous — it could be fun. Lights lit up the landscape. We began to stroll under flashing movie marquees, to watch in wonder as the town’s Christmas tree lights were turned on, and to eat hotdogs at a night baseball game.

      Home environments changed. Reading by candle light and cooking on a wood stove were left behind with the introduction of electrical appliances. With the flick of a switch or turn of a dial, ranges and ovens were ready for food preparation. Refrigerators kept food fresher for longer and leftovers could be stored for more than a day. Frozen foods became a staple of life, and grocery shopping shifted to a weekly event. Although life became easier, the expectation of cooking more varied and exciting meals added a new and different kind of pressure on homemakers.

      Work environments also changed. Ford Motor’s assembly line was only possible through the use of electricity. Many craftsmen, who had worked on their own using an extensive skill set, became line workers, focused on a single, repetitive task, bearing little relationship to the whole. With the loss of independence came higher wages and greater job security.

      Cities changed. New inventions, such as elevators and escalators, allowed buildings to be built higher and higher, changing the visual landscape. Soon electrical wires powering trams, electric buses, and subways, created a tangled web overhead, some of which survive in places like San Francisco, Toronto, Boston, and Montreal.

      Although electricity brought many benefits, it also brought unanticipated, denied, or ignored downsides. Fossil-fuel generating stations are hard on the environment, releasing tonnes of CO2 gas into the atmosphere. As newer sources of power become available, fossil-fuel stations are being phased out. Canada introduced its controversial CANDU nuclear reactors for cleaner power generation in the 1960s. In the early 2000s, more environmentally-friendly technologies, such as wind turbines and solar power, began dotting the landscape.

      Despite its environmental complications, electricity is the bedrock technology of our time.

      Transportation: The Great

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