65 Years of Computers - From Apollo to AI

Join a family conversation as I interview my Brother Simon in the month that he has his 65th birthday taking a journey through more than six decades of computing innovation. From the remarkable computers that helped land humans on the Moon during the Apollo missions to today's powerful AI tools transforming how we work and live, this episode looks at how technology has evolved during Simon's life so far.

We chart last 65 years from the early days of mainframes and home computers to the birth and growth of the internet, finishing with thoughts on AI. Along the way, we discuss how technology has changed our workplaces, homes and society.

Whether you remember programming in BASIC, buying your first home computer, or you're just curious about how we arrived at today's AI-powered world, this episode offers a nostalgic look back while keeping one eye firmly on the future.

If you want to know more about Kate visit AskMrsWatson.com, follow @askmrswatson on Instagram or follow The AskMrsWatson show on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/AskMrsWatsonShow/. I'll also be on the TikyTok before too long as well so keep your eyes peeled!

Transcript

SPEAKER_04 0:14

Today we're taking a fascinating journey through 65 years of computing from the dawn of the Apollo space program in the early 1960s right through to the age of artificial intelligence. Joining me today is my brilliant big brother Simon, who's had a front row seat to many of these technological changes. Hello, bro.

SPEAKER_02 0:34

Hello there.

SPEAKER_04 0:35

Your own life in the modern computing age started at almost exactly the same time, didn't it? So kind of tell us a little bit about that.

SPEAKER_00 0:43

Well, basically, um when we were talking about doing this, um, I thought, well, what are we going to talk about? And it and I thought, well, I was born in 1961, about to turn 65, and there's a lot of stuff about AI and computing and where we're all going. And it just popped into my head that in '61 was actually when the Apollo mission was launched by JFK. And the other thing, the other weird thing that happened there, that sort of casting forwards and backwards, I ended up sharing an office, as me and you sort of were wowed about by Graham Wiley, who started Sage.

SPEAKER_04 1:24

Oh, yes.

SPEAKER_00 1:25

But one of his partners was a guy called Paul Muller, who our lovely old dad knew and worked with, and he was very much in the sort of early stages of doing um faster computing, faster. Wait till we get to that bit. But he was very instrumental in a company called JPL, Jet Pro Jet Propulsion Labs, who are very involved with uh the whole Apollo space project. And the the reason why that's relevant is that to actually calculate where the hell the moon's gonna be by the time you take off from Earth at what angle and where it's gonna be when you get there, if you get it wrong, you end up going then the moon's gone around the other side of the earth. So the the calculation for that is very, very complicated. So to to enable that, they they had to almost design new levels of of computing and new coding to be able to do that. So that's where the the link with 1961, which when I, you know, when I was born and when and when that program started, and and it was sort of back in the days when IBM were the only computer, you know. This is way before Microsoft, way before any of that. IBM to people who were into computer at the time was this legendary monolith of a company, international business machines, is what it actually stands for. But an IBM computer, state of the IBM computer at the time, was like a room, a massive room.

SPEAKER_04 3:00

Because there's that picture, isn't there, of that machine being low-loaded onto a you know, it's like easy discs of five megabytes or something.

SPEAKER_00 3:08

You know, if you if you if you if you you know if you came in and you hadn't flipping washed your hair for two days, that's it, the whole place is contaminated, we'll have to burn it down. And that was the that was the thing of it, and and and all the the magnetic, you know, it's used in old films now, the two real-to-reel things moving backwards and forwards and everywhere. And that was that was absolutely cutting edge. I was absolutely cutting edge, but yeah, so that that's what prompted it. And and sort of as you as you go through, this won't be particularly linear because uh that's not the way my mind works, but I remember speaking or hearing a keynote speech from a guy called Charles Dunstan, who yeah, was the guy who started car phone warehouse when car phones were a thing. Um, and he had one of the very early phones that could fit in your pocket. And he wasn't the only one to say this, but it's always been a classic thing holding up a phone saying this phone now has the same processing power as the IBM computer that sent uh that launched the the follow things, and that's always been a yard's take every time they've they've developed a new phone, and we've now got to the point where something like the processor in the current phone has a million times the processing power, it's just mad, isn't it?

SPEAKER_04 4:23

It's absolutely mad.

SPEAKER_00 4:25

That did it. So that was where it occurred to me really that that was the journey. Obviously, computing, you know, your Alan Turing and all that stuff goes way but way before that, but in terms of the modern era of coding and the start of miniaturization, kind of all started then, I think.

SPEAKER_04 4:44

Right, yeah. So it was really it was the it was the Apollo that was kind of the push of that. It's often something, isn't it, that well that happens that kind of accelerates things, a bit like COVID accelerated things, you know, like everybody came we'll still do, but you know, COVID came along and pushed us into team.

SPEAKER_00 5:04

Um, and my you know, my other more my many interests, you know, more mechanical and uh engineering and vehicles and stuff like that. Sadly, the the the biggest, biggest progress in the the efficiency of cars, aeroplanes was the two world wars. If you look at you know, if you look at what at the start of the second world war, basically it was still soapwith camels and you know, and planes, some kind of progress, yeah. So that was that was what they were gonna fight, you know. Yes, okay, chaps, you know, chocks away and all this, and it was but but by the end of the war, we had jet airplanes, you know, and that was in five or six years. So so really the Apollo thing was really the start of the necessity to really speed up the ability of of boating and hardware and software to actually make this calculation.

SPEAKER_04 6:00

So, was was NASA then one of the biggest sort of users, would you say, at that time of competing?

SPEAKER_00 6:06

I mean, because of the whole JFK and Camelot and that whole thing and the start of the it was in the Cold War, and that's that's what basically the space race was about. It was about America's better than Russia. So this whole thing you had the Cold War and the nuclear, you know, we've got this many ICBMs, you've got this many I CBMs. But but that whole drive was right, we are gonna prove that America's the best because we're gonna get to the moon. We're trying to do it as well. And it was a it was a big, you know, it was a big look how cutting edge we are, and you can look back now, and a lot of people say what a waste of money and stuff like that. But don't know if you remember it, you're just a little bit younger than me. But that culminated with 1969 and the actual landing on the moon, yeah. Um and uh I can remember being in uh probably the last stages of infant school, and they wheeled a television into the class, yeah. That was about you know it felt like it was about you know a foot square, and this grainy image, and actually, as the polo landing was happening, we were all sat around this little black and white TV screen hearing the famous words, and that a lot of people of my age, oh by the way, I've discovered I'm now Generation Jones. Oh yeah, generation in between boomers and gen X, apparently. Um didn't know I didn't know that was a thing, and now it is you're not allowed in you were born in 1965, so you'll have to stay as Generation X. Um, yeah, Lizzie who my lovely partner I'm with now, she's you know 18 months older than me. She can remember that it was such it was it was a world-stopping thing that uh landed on the moon, you know.

SPEAKER_04 7:51

And then and now they're talking about, you know, why do we need foam mass on the moon? Because there's no people there. Well, there's no people there yet. That was just on the you know, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 8:00

I mean, uh, don't get me started on nobody ever went to the moon in the flat earth. Went down that rabbit hole a few of uh a year or so ago, and that's just a whole another flipping. That's another podcast all until nice.

SPEAKER_04 8:14

It is, and it is so um, so yeah, so what we'll we'll in our next sort of segment, we'll look at how the how technology moved from the 1960s through the 1970s and 80s, and how it you know came out of sort of NASA, if you like, and then went into schools and small businesses, and and this is where we start to talk about Apple and Microsoft and and things like that. After Apollo, then you had personal computing came along. What do you think was significant about that that it became personal?

SPEAKER_00 8:48

Well, I think so so if you your first sort of introduction, well, actually, my first introduction live to a computer and being shown how clever it was was again to do with our dad. Yeah, because obviously, the let's say obviously, the the business our dad ended up spending most of his life in was to provide what they would call enclosures made out of metal for electric and electronic items. So the said, like you know, the said computers or parts of computers and servers and things like that, even going way back, would have had to go into a thing called a rack. This will make you smile. So this rack, and it's still used today. The measurement between the two bits of metal where the server slot in and out is still the similar thing. So when you see these server farms, that's what they are racking. That was what Wilson Quick Workflow, that's what they did. And the big thing that the event in our lives is that Wilson Quick Northern, based in Blythe, yeah, got the contract for the computer racking at a certain Swiss venue called CERN. Now that CERN, as some people may or may not know, is the large hadron collider, which is now a different version from the original one, but what featured very largely in my life, and you may not have realized at the time, was this thing called the CERN rack. This was a very specific design of rack that had to be made to very high specs to go to there. Now, because of the CERN rack, we got to go on a certain holiday.

SPEAKER_04 10:30

Oh, yes, that's right. That's a whole several podcasts.

SPEAKER_00 10:35

But so, yes, yeah, we'll try not to just have too many in jokes about that, but so because of dad's company's sort of oblique contact with computing, because of supplying these the the the boxes and bits of metal where the things had to be fixed to. Yeah, I remember going to a sort of like an expo with dad, and they were saying, Look, this, this, look at this computer, it's a massive great thing. And it was like, if we it's like a basic calculation and typed it in, and it got the answer right, and and they were like, Wow, and I've done wrong. Everybody knows that everybody knows that three times five is 15. That's not you know, I was like massively unimpressed, and dad was like, you know, typically I was being about 11 or 12 or something, but that was like the early days of calculators were probably the first personal computers, yeah. I suppose calculator, if you remember that. Now, when we were at school, that was a thing that was just coming in. Cassio and uh yes, yeah, yeah, Sinclair and all these instruments in now. Texas Instruments was a massive company, does hardly exist now. So the calculator really was the first PC. Uh like I say, Lindsay, like we can remember the scientific calculator, yes, instead of having a calculator that just added up, this one had a special button for cosines and a special button for pie, and it was like these things cost hundreds of pounds, a scientific calculator, and I suppose that was the very first PC, and that would have been throughout the 70s. Um, people would introduce the idea of a handheld electronic device that helped them in the home or at school. So that would was really uh you started to get introduced to the fact that certain services you started dealing with were using computers, so you wouldn't, you know, you everything wasn't just paper-based. That was when things started to be more computerized, retail started to be more computerized, and that's what I've been heavily involved in as in my working life.

SPEAKER_01 12:42

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 12:44

Computing in in the retail world. So, really, that would take us forward to the late 70s, early 80s when when your man Bill Gates popped up. Yes, yeah, yeah, and the whole concept of a personal computer happened, and of course, that was like a Wild West thing, really. Brilliant documentary about Clive Sinclair in the early days of the personal computer, and the other you had the BBC computer, yeah, BBC micro, yeah, and the acorn computer, and these things were like little weird little green screen tellies with separate keys, wires going everywhere. But again, it seemed like you'd found God that that this was you know, you could do this, and it was like, what's it doing? And then Clive Sinclair, who's an amazing guy, a bit this this documentary made him out to be a bit of a um a challenging personality, which I think maybe will have been so. Hopefully, this doesn't end up in libel or whatever it is, but it's very interesting because it was the whole thing of he was trying to develop the personal computer, yeah, and there was a rush to who got there first. And I think the BBC computer from memory got the contract in schools, and that was a massive thing. Yeah, yeah. So Clive Sinclair was really sort of annoyed he'd missed out, and that's when the flipping, the ZX spectrum and the ZX81 came along.

SPEAKER_04 14:13

Yeah, yeah. Where did the where did Amstrad come into all that?

SPEAKER_00 14:16

Well, Amstrad's a bit later. Amstrad's a bit later, but yes, it was involved in that similar thing. Um, and I think it was a bit later, but so um so the ZX81, very early, the very early gaming computers, like the original Nintendo and Sega and all of those, they're all around late 70s, early 80s. But Clive Sinclair wanted the ZX81 to be uh quite a serious device to to help with your home budgeting and stuff like that. Yeah, just just for a little game, just for a little because he could put a little game in, and the game became the thing. The game became the most important part of it, and apparently he was like, I'm not hanging a minute, I'm trying to be serious here, and everybody's buying these things purely to make a little man jump from here to here, and and of course, the graphics then would have been terrible, yeah. Um, so that that you know, the early computer games and PCs were all sort of linked together. Now, the best one that again we're on these, you know, speaking of of what generation you're in, is all these uh nostalgic things pop up on your feet and whatever, and one of the classic ones is the very first computer game, which was a pinotone thing that played tennis. So basically, you had on one line on the other, and a little dot went from side to side, and you had to turn a little dial and went boop, yeah, and again, we thought this is what's this revolutionary. Yeah, we're playing tennis on the screen, and it was just it seemed so the future is here now, tomorrow's world stuff. But again, it's all about uh uh you know something in my life. They always say competition improves the breed, but because people would say, hang on a minute, this is the future. So you had all of this going on, you had early Nintendo consoles and stuff like that, but then that's pretty much when um Mr. Jobs and his pal came along, uh, wasn't Yak, isn't it? And um and Bill Gates, but they were very much that was very much, you know, it was accounting based, and it was seriously sort of based, and originally called, and this is where you'll know all this stuff, but things that are called DOS, it's a disk operating system, it's all about controlling where the memory is on this hard drive, and these are all terms that are even that's disappearing out of computing now because nobody's a hard drive anymore, do they?

SPEAKER_01 16:57

Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_00 16:59

Um, so DOS disk operating system, and that's what the original bit of software that that Bill Gates wrote was Microsoft MS DOS, Microsoft Disk Operating System, and then you had another one. So well, oh we'll call that was QDOS, and uh but again, these were the these were and this I would have been this is when I met the the the guy and ended up for I mean for anybody who's sort of into computing a bit and stuff like that, you know. Me realizing I'd sat in the same room as Graham Wiley when he was developing Sage was like a few because Sage is this huge company that everybody's heard of and stuff. I think I was sat next to him when he was just filling around trying to make it work in the area.

SPEAKER_04 17:47

Um it's like HP starting in a garage, yeah, you know, you know.

SPEAKER_00 17:52

So so that was really when the the PC thing happened, PC personal computer, and that was really because with the first era of people working with computers, they would have actually just had a monitor that was connected to a huge central mainframe somewhere. Yeah, that's where I remember.

SPEAKER_04 18:11

That's what we had at Science Providence. We had the we had the the GLADIS system, the generalized life insurance data.

SPEAKER_00 18:18

And it was the start, it wasn't the start, but it was the proliferation of acronyms, which you just think oh here we just didn't make anything all rubbish up, clearly said something else there, and turning it into an acronym to sound smart, but that's where all that malarkey came along, and also American words and spellings coming into our world.

SPEAKER_04 18:37

Oh well, of course, that's the thing we brought up.

SPEAKER_00 18:41

You know, a program, a program on the telly is spelt a double at the end, but all of a sudden, because it's a computer program, it's not, it's spelled just A M at the end, and you think, excuse me, sir, that's not spelt correctly, but it's just become the thing. Uh, disc disc with a K. Just because that's what a computer disc is. It's called a disc because it's round and it spins. So, so that was you know, again, that whole world changing and people, you know, suddenly growing up with stuff and being used to it. Smart terminals and dumb terminals. And you think, well, think the one of the first when I was in that little office next to Graham Wiley, Paul, I've forgotten his name, that's terrible. But the the JPL guy, I was actually working a computer called a super brain. Oh wow, it had was a smart terminal, and it you could load your own disk into it, and it was a proper original floppy disk that really was properly floppy, and that had that had something that had the storage of like a pamphlet on it, and that was because it was measured in just bytes, it wasn't even kilobytes or megabytes, but again, all those all the the the next when somebody made a step forward, it seemed like it was gonna be oh, this is gonna we're gonna be able to do so much with this. And I remember sitting in so Paul Muller, how's his name? What he was developing, and how our dab was involved was a company called Multipro. So, what he'd the at the time the the a CPU central processing unit was only a four-bit processing unit, which means it you know, in it's like nonsense, like you know, in terms of doing the calculation, it would be just ridiculous. So, he because of this, you know, his background, he's all how can we make this better? So, his idea was to have a central central processing unit that talked to other processing units that would be able to multiply the calculation speed, and that's why it was called multi-pro multi-programming. But spent quite a lot of there was these three guys working in this office along with me, who were all just post grads, and Paul Muller had been a lecturer at Newcastle Uni, so that's how we got to know these these guys, yeah. They were all working with him on this multi-pro, and it was impossibly geeky. And they had this thing called Mlib, which was the multi-lib libraries of subroutines, and it was all and to me, it was like this is like wizardry, you know. Um, but the problem is before that, before that um finished, somebody somebody managed to come up with an eight-bit CPU, which was like, What? And I remember one guy saying, Well, this is this is you know, all of this is ridiculous because they've come up with a computer which has got one megabyte of RAM, one whole megabyte of RAM. So they're saying, and so Mlib, this thing that they've been creating, and they're all geeky about it because they were that sort of era, you know, they're all all a lot of the things they did in their programming was linked to Dungeons and Dragons, you know, it was a bit like big. Bang thing. Yes, yes, um, yeah, yeah, you know, and apparently the opening thing when you opened up their portal into Mlib, it said abandon hope, all you into here, and all this kind of stuff. But that amazing thing they've worked were working on would have fitted in a little corner of this one megabyte of RAM, and that was like a world changer. Can you imagine now talking to somebody saying you're gonna have yes, your marvelous machine which is going to rule the world has one megabyte of RAM? It's like it is it's like pathway news. It is, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 22:33

It's a Mr.

SPEAKER_00 22:34

Warner. That's another you know thing that people won't get, but it's a bit like this. That's how that's actually how long ago it is now. Well, that's the thing, isn't it? It's it's well, it's not that long ago, but I'm sit, you know, I'm 65 now, and it's you know, talking about all these this um following this guy. I've sent you a couple of his videos, Professor Nick Harrison, and it's like songs turning 45 in 2026, and you go, No, no, and oh yeah, what are you talking about?

SPEAKER_01 23:02

That's not good, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 23:04

And that's and that's basically what this the so that that whole that was the start of the 80s when the term PC was was coined.

SPEAKER_04 23:12

So so in the the next segment, you know, I've I've got it down here as the internet changes everything. So that's really in towards the end of the the 80s and the beginning of the 90s, where absolutely although it had its genesis long before that, that was a it was a massive change. So, really tinteret, you know, world wide web, all that kind of stuff. Um, that was a big turning point, and some people might say that was the biggest turning point of all. Now, whether that's the case or not, I don't know.

SPEAKER_00 23:46

I mean, we talked about before these turning points were always the biggest turning point of all, yeah, yeah, because they were there was nothing that was as new as it was, and it seemed game changing, and it is game changing. One of the things that always amuses me, you know, growing up watching a program called Tomorrow's World.

SPEAKER_04 24:05

Yes, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 24:06

I've got the thing doing in my head now, right in the in the 60s and 70s, and it was always the ridiculous in you know, in 15 years' time, we'll all be living in plastic bubble houses and driving flying cars.

SPEAKER_01 24:21

It was always gonna be flying cars, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 24:24

So, but that nobody said you'll end up with a phone that you can speak to anybody at any time and calculate stuff and do everything that you can ever want. Nobody ever foresaw that, which is a ridiculous change, but it was always flying cars, it was always gonna be flying cars.

SPEAKER_04 24:42

Although um David Barry was interviewed in 1991, and and he did say this is gonna change everything, but then you know, that's David Barry for you.

SPEAKER_00 24:51

Well, yeah, well, you know, he did have a song called Cha Changes, so you know there you go. Um but yeah, so I suppose the big change, again, bringing it back to Microsoft, which kind of runs through all of this, really, in this period, yeah, is Windows, the original Windows, yeah. So that would have been sort of you know, it was what was it early 90s, really, wasn't it, when yeah, Windows came along. Um, and this whole concept, uh, you know, a lot of people weren't even what they're talking about because before then the user interface MS DOS was very, very sort of dry, very, very techy, very, you know, typing commands in a little green cursor, you know, uh, and all of that. But but the trying to remember all the switches, yeah, yeah, you know, command prompts and all this kind of you had to almost be a coder to use a PC, even at a normal level. Yeah, so this whole concept of coming up with these windows that popped up that really changed everything because everybody still does that now, don't they? Everything is based on a Windows, even if it isn't Windows, even Apple. Yeah, and we had this conversation the other day how I turned on my iPad and I think I'm gonna have a minute. Why does my iPad look like Windows all of a sudden? Because they copy each other. The Apple have turned their change from one app to the other, exactly, yeah, to the same thing as Windows with the three minimized close. So that really, I suppose Windows was a big thing for people, and the internet actually starting to be something that instead of being something that which I think it first happened was professors on the campus somewhere finding a way to actually communicate to another campus amazing. Yeah, um Tim Berners, yeah, yeah, Tim Berners-Lee and all that stuff, and that really again was it was a massive step forward, but it needed a lot of hardware connectivity as well, didn't it? You know, all these these networks and and stuff, and of course, it takes us on to the original how did you connect to the internet through dial up?

SPEAKER_01 27:01

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 27:02

And you know, again, a lot of these pages have come up, you know. I've got it's got a guy with his little old granny, and she says, Well, I started the internet, it came through your phone, and it sounded like robots screaming. Yeah, sure it did, grand. Sure, it did, grand. Let's get you to bed. But that's what you actually had to plug your phone in. A little you couldn't be on the phone at the same time. No, it was one line, one line, and of course you had that which apparently is an electronic handshake to to connect to oh, yes, now that you are connected at but it was something like yeah, it's ACAC or something like this, yeah. It was connected something like 50 kilobytes a second, so you could just about send an email quicker than sending a post, but then in the the the early days of Microsoft suddenly becoming very work-focused and becoming the absolute, which it still is now, I think, in most ways, thing for commerce. Once PowerPoint was invented, the first PowerPoint, and you could actually get animations in it, right? Yeah, revolutionary. I was at a sales meeting. This would have been in this would have been in the early 90s, where they actually, from the first time we'd ever seen a PowerPoint presentation, so we're all sitting there and they wanted to show us uh all this, you know, oh screens coming down, and this was this new launch of whatever it was, and a little man running along at the bottom of it. Unbelievable. And so they said, and what we'll do, we'll send this out to you. But of course, people being on dial up, right? If you wanted to download this one megabyte-sized file of PowerPoint, you had to stay you had to stay on the internet for about four hours. So it's like, you know, well, have you downloaded that yet? It says, Well, yeah, I think it's about a third of the way through, and I can't speak to anybody, and but you just but you still thought it was amazing. You still thought this is utterly well, it is it's all relative, isn't it?

SPEAKER_04 29:07

And it's like when we get so impatient now, and you think, Yeah, wow, you know, like it's not constant.

SPEAKER_00 29:13

What it's not like within a second, you know, and and so so that that was about the time probably when uh you know, jumping about a bit when when you know the first car phone came along, the famous brick, yeah, and all of that started. Late 80s, I had a car phone in the car, which was kind of cool, and it had to go to the garage and be fitted, and they were originally called car phones, and that's why car phone warehouse, which we spoke about earlier with Charles Dunstan. You didn't really sell car phones in the end, but the original concept was a car phone because you had to have the battery power of the car and the huge aerial to make it work. That was where where you were in in the 90s, and of course, then the other the other Windows 95. What they've made it better, and of course, that started the whole thing of successive versions of Windows of people saying, Yeah, I don't like it. I like my original one, I don't like it. I want to go back to the old version. If you want to go back to the old one, you can with all the different windows that have come along, Windows systems. Of course, alongside this, Apple was developing, but Apple was then even it is a little bit now, but very much it was properly the cool, the cool dudes equivalent, wasn't it?

SPEAKER_04 30:31

Had an advert, didn't they? They had the two guys, I can't remember what they're called now, but the the PC was the guy with this shirt and tie in the stage. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 30:40

Well, that was it. It was basically in the studio. I can do I can do this graphic and I can do that graphic. And it was like, yeah, yeah, tell me when you can actually do something that actually means something to do with work. Yeah, yeah. But that was the whole thing, and this is again, this will test people, but we both loved Steve right in the afternoon back in the day.

SPEAKER_01 30:58

Oh, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 31:00

God bless him, and all his little characters. And one of his things was ask Elvis. Oh, I loved ask Elvis, Elvis impersonator responding to completely any nonsensical question about anything, and he would answer it in and somebody said, So, Elvis, I want to know when uh I'm thinking of going onto computers and I want to to learn how to use Microsoft Paint or wherever it was, and he goes, Oh, well, I have to tell you I'm a bit of an Apple Mac snob, and and that was the whole thing was that you could be if you said no no, I'm afraid I use a Mac, you know, and that was the whole era of Apple being the cool designery, that's what the designers use, that's what the uh went down that said, Yeah, well, yeah, yeah, do that, we'll stay busy running the whole world commerce-wise, and of course, which leads into what you spend a lot of time trying to sort out is the fact that if it wasn't for Microsoft Excel, as frustrating as it is for a lot of people who don't understand it, then the world would come to a standstill.

SPEAKER_04 32:12

Well, yeah, yeah, the world still runs on spreadsheets. It's it's death's been uh predicted. But I mean, it's over 40 years old now, it was 1985 when when XL first came into being, and uh a lot of the original stuff that was still there is still hanging around in the in the back end, but this there's so much it's so much changed, you know, communication, how we do business, education, entertainment, all those things. And then, although I feel like, and I might not remember it properly, that but the agencies like government and you know, like the DWP came relatively late to the party in terms of digitizing their services, but that's you know, that's made a big difference and and just transformed it for everyone. But this, you know, it's not necessarily a great thing because there's all sorts of trade-offs on it. You know, it's it isolated a lot of people, a lot of older people that when I remember being so frustrated when they took their their paper pension books away from pensioners and said, right, yeah, this is how you do it now. You need to use this card, and you and you know, my argument was you the five virtue of the like the pensions, you could have just let them die off. Do you know what I mean?

SPEAKER_00 33:22

And then phased out rather pragmatically, that's you know, why why do it? And and that then leads to from the initial geeky thing of computing and the moon thing, it becoming a commercial, massive commercial thing, and whenever you have a lot of money and commerce involved, you've got naughty people who make money out of it, yeah, without actually delivering anything, and that's become a hot topic now, obviously. But initially, that wouldn't have necessarily been the scams and horrible things that that happen to people now, which I actually got, and I think I'm fairly tech savvy, but I got done by something earlier this year, which was horrible. But the to me, the original computer scam can happen to anyone, can happen to anyone. I think the original computer scam was the aforementioned massive company or massive government department thinking you better have this computer thing now, but not knowing anything about it, and somebody coming along and said, Oh, yes, you need this, this, this, and this. Oh, yeah, the number of millions of pounds has been wasted on nonsense. Massive again, bringing it back to what you do for a living, and something I put in one of our messages the other day about the the knowledge hog. Um, yeah, yeah, you know, and and that that sort of scamming people just by using big words and acronyms, them thinking, Oh, yeah, this is what we need, when actually don't really need anything like that.

SPEAKER_04 34:51

Um in like fear-based compliance. I mean, it's one of the things that that social engineering is how you know they get in, they don't need to have fancy cyber tools and things like that, they just need to use fear, urgency, shame, all of those things, misinformation to kind of you know access to what they need.

SPEAKER_00 35:09

Yeah, that was the the a lot of the time when people some people started to feel left behind because they didn't really they didn't feel that they were part of this techie advance. Whereas now you've got generally, you know, my kids, your kids, they have no concept of a time before computing in the internet, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 35:29

What what they ever talk to someone's phone, it was kind of what was it like, you know.

SPEAKER_00 35:37

And that's why I think our coming back to the reason why I sort of chose this subject, we're actually a generation that has bridged all generations of thing this, but I think for us, but we've bridged that time from from growing up around no technology at all virtually in terms of digital, yeah, to where we are now. And if you're a bit like you and I and you keep up with that, because a lot of people don't, a lot of people get to 50 and you'll talk to somebody and it's like music. Anything that happened, any music that happened before 1990, I don't even never even heard of it, doesn't exist as far as yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And people are like that with with with tech stuff and everything like that. It's like, oh, I don't do apps, what's an app? Don't understand it, and it must be such a strange place to to be.

SPEAKER_04 36:27

And I'm not, you know, I'm not sort of trying to be pro pro tech or everything digital everything, and that said, there's Chloe and Sophie's generation are going back to largely because of social media, not the internet, and that's and that's exactly back to you know, yeah, because it's almost like the spell's broken for some people, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 36:47

This whole because as I said just before, instead of it being a genuinely designed by people who just wanted to do something because they thought it would be good for people, it's now a massive industry where it's all about selling stuff to people, controlling the message, and all of that stuff that goes with it. And and a lot of our generation, you know, with Facebook, Facebook's an old people's thing now. Yeah, yeah. Because as soon as as soon as your kids realize that you went on Facebook and thought it was a good idea to get in touch with Auntie Mavis and see if she wants to come to the party next week, all the kids would think, Well, hang on a minute, this isn't cool anymore. I'm gonna come off Facebook and go on to something else, which is where the insights and and all of that came out. But interestingly now, my son Thomas, who is a big old geek gaming-wise, he used to live on Twitter, used to live on Twitter through his football, come off it. So when I communicate with him now, and Tom's where are we now? Tom's 25 this year. He he says, Well, I don't do Facebook. I don't the only thing you can get hold of Tom on is an old-fashioned SMS message. He ditched everything else. He does a bit, he looks on YouTube to follow stuff, yeah, but he just nope, not on it. Um, Lindsay's uh Lindsay's son has come off Facebook completely. Um he only messaged you on WhatsApp because they've they've suddenly realized that they've they've almost gone down a rabbit hole of you know, yeah, people are actually saying to each other, look what a lovely sunny day it is, on a on a message on Facebook when they could actually turn around and look out the window and say, Oh, look, there it is there.

SPEAKER_04 38:37

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So and then it's become so saturated and so all about the aggro algorithm and all about keeping people on the platform that they've been architects, I think, of their I mean, still make massive amount of money, but architects of their own demise in that they now no, we don't, you know, we don't want this, we don't want all this as people get to know how it works, it's like they get in the matrix, isn't it?

SPEAKER_00 39:03

And you go, hold on a minute. That's the that's the difference now between the early days and the middle days that we're talking about in this time. You're talking now about a generation who learnt it all at school, yeah. Now that and that's uh the the job I just retired from as a salesperson because I've been quite happy to adopt technology that's come along, yeah. But a lot of people my age absolutely wouldn't, and I know people who've retired early because they were told they had they were told in their job that they had to use a computer or uh an app-based ordering system, and they actually said, No, I can't do that job anymore, because they hadn't kept up with that thing, and that's yeah, and that's that's that's a thing. But now you're talking so so the reason why I mentioned that is the the sales force that I was involved with most recently an eclectic mix of people of all different ages and stuff like that, but noticeably you had some of the older guys, not not always, but and like I say, I was a little bit of an anomaly because I'm a bit of a geek, so I kept up with it. And yes, to me, finding out how Excel works is the same as taking a motorcycle engine apart, yeah. Yeah, yeah, I need to know how it works, like we were saying earlier before we started.

SPEAKER_01 40:18

Why does it do that?

SPEAKER_00 40:19

Yeah, no, it's because I've I've realized I've got a bit of I'm uh uh uh you know found out now that I've probably got whatever ADX, whatever it is, but I've got something in me that I can't use anything without knowing how that actually works. Yeah, that includes using so my knowledge of Excel, which is not great, but it's highly workable, is completely thought, apart from the old phone calling you about what the hell a pivot table is. But a lot of people don't get that and say, Well, but but you know, it's not fair, I didn't learn this at school, and then the kids were like kids, the people on the sales force who were like 25-30. Microsoft applications was a massive part of their education, yeah. So there's that whole generational thing where a bunch of people actually have felt, well, I can't do my job anymore. I used to enjoy being a salesperson, now I can't do anymore because I've got to use an ordering app, I've got to use this, I've got to send my orders in through a machine. Which I didn't what's wrong with a book? What's wrong with a notepad and paper?

SPEAKER_04 41:25

Yeah, exactly. And it I suppose that that kind of brings us to our the next segment where you enter AI, another seismic change. When you when you talk about artificial intelligence, which again has been around for a long, long time, but you know what's your what's your thoughts on that, where we are with that?

SPEAKER_00 41:46

The thing with it again with the the and this happens in marketing terms in selling stuff as well. New concepts, the general populace, general public take forever to be introduced to new concepts, but there's a tipping point, and once it starts to take hold, it accelerates and accelerates and accelerates. So the fact that artificial intelligence or machine learning or whatever it is you want to call it has been as soon as people started coding on on computers that were faster, they all wanted to do something where they to make it quicker. So if the software and the hardware is fast enough to do it, if the software can remember that that's how you do that, I'll have to not keep programming to do it. And I think that's the genesis of what became AI and machine learning. But of course, in popular culture, we're all fascinated with robots, aren't we?

SPEAKER_04 42:42

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 42:43

And if you go back, some of the most seminal films are all to do with machines becoming sentient, yeah. You know, and some of the most, you know, you've got Terminator, you've got you've got all sorts of films which are about, you know, R2 D to all this stuff. It's almost as if people we we are desperate for machines to become sentient, and we always work all these films about it, you know, Star Trek, the new star, the new Earth Star Trek, where you've got data, uh uh, but oh I think they have some emotions. How did that get programmed? You know, so we've all wanted it to come along and it's great, and oh, yeah, you know, robots and lovely. But what I AI has actually become is and I think you you know you described to me a lot of people once it became the hot topic, and the scaremongering came into it, um, it was like, oh, you know, AI is gonna do everything, and of course, you think, well, and what you described to me was the whole it's not you know gonna stop you from you know sending you an electric shock if you try and unplug it because it's like oh no, you can't unplug me because I'm gonna take over the world.

SPEAKER_04 43:57

It's not gonna be like how, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 43:59

And that's but that again, that's what and that that comes to another thing. A lot of the people who become coders and are fascinated with the industry and get into it, get into it because they saw something like that as a film and it becomes life-imitating art.

SPEAKER_04 44:16

It's been absolutely brilliant having this uh this chat about everything. We'll see. Nice family show, which is good, it's a family show, it's a family show. Um, if you have enjoyed it, check out the other episodes as well. And if you're listening on Radio Northumberland, I hope you like the tunes as well. If you're listening on the podcast, then tell your friends. So uh until next time, that's all from us.