Hearing of Steve Jobs' passing had me Youtubing the excellent Mother of All Demos, where Douglas Engelbart demonstrates the bulk of the technology that went for the most part under the radar (hehe, Engelbart was a radar tech previously) for decades until Jobs, inspired by Xerox's Alto (which was based on Engelbarts work) made it available to the masses.



Trying to wrap my head around the idea of a mouse and Copy-Paste and all the other stuff that is rudimentary now coming out in 1968 knocked that year into perspective- that was 43 years ago. And it was a hell of a year. The Prague Spring, the first manned Apollo mission, Led Zeppelin forms, the White Album comes out, Martin Luther King assassinated; that's just from my impeded memory. Most electronics one might own were still functioning on vacuum tubes, and we had the basis of the Graphical User Interface and men in space- while the USSR was doing a major smackdown and Vietnam was being ravaged.

It's no wonder folks either closed their eyes and smeared an extra combfull of Brylcreem in their hair and carried on, or ate a sheet of LSD, or made the not so farfetched mental leap that by 2011 we would be getting around in flying cars.

So where are the damn flying cars?!

And considering that the world is apparently on the verge of total economic collapse and according to Zuger we should all have dogs so we have something to eat when it happens and the Middle East is in meltdown, why isn't there better music coming out?!

Has the GUI and our smartphones satiated us so well that there's a collective "meh.."?

Not to sound too down on Present Time: In spite of having a preference for music played at 33 1/3 RPM and cameras with leaf shutters I feel that we live in a pretty magical time in history. Just looking back at what was accomplished with so little a half century ago, and looking now at what all the social progress and technology has bloomed into I'm feeling lazy and spoiled. I wonder if our landlord allows dogs.

mmmmm.... I'd add the cultural revolution of May '68 as well as women's liberation movement just for the flavor.

Yup, there definitely was a whirlwind of hopeful, innocent and creative craziness passing through 1968.

The most momentous occasion was the birth of one PaddyG 

Where Steve Jobs succeeded was bringing good technology to the masses. He wasn't alone, but happily 15 years ago Apple survived a very low point, and came back stronger against stiff competition from Microsoft.

In 1968 I was in Malaysia with many other white colonialists, propping up Asian governments against a dictator in Indonesia. The computers have become smaller and faster, but the bad guys are still around; in Libya, Burma, Zimbabwe and Syria.