Friday, April 25, 2014

Steep curve

My father was telling me today about a talk he gave in 1995. He’d been asked to give an address at the Annual Convention of the Computer Society of India. He had talked on this subject before but it had been to smaller groups comprising more general audiences. But on this occasion he was talking about ‘Demystifying the Internet’ to people who worked in the field of computers. The talk went well – the packed hall was peopled by hundreds of curious specialists and it was, he says, quite the largest number of people he had addressed.

My father jumped on to the internet bandwagon fairly early. He was part of Shammi Kapoor’s ‘Internet Users Club of India’ in 1994-95. He would bring home dot matrix sheets full of lawyer jokes in font Lucida. On our first computer, I remember playing code games on DOS mode. He signed me up for my own hotmail account in 1998 (I think!).

And now in 2014, he sent me this infographic that tells us how far we’ve come, how rapidly the world has changed. 2.4 Billion people chattering away!


My father was born in 1941 – he has seen technologies come and he has seen them go: the VCR, the pager, floppy drives of various sizes...  “I’m blessed in many ways,” he said to me today, “and I feel so lucky to have ridden this wave.”

4 comments:

Sunshine said...

More blessed is you S for having him and I know you know that :-)

Sheetal said...

So many blessings are there, pa, what to say.

Shweta said...

Your hotmail account can't have been later than 1996, you know. For some reason, I am remembering those absolutely beautiful 'burnt' photocopy papers father used to bring home. And those covers he used to make out of them. I thought they were the coolest.

Sheetal said...

Why do you say that? kya saboot hai tumhare paas? No, it may have been 1997 but not as early as 96, which was the year it started (in July). I remember for sure having it in Madras ie 98.
Yes, those covers were amazing!