Tonight, some PBS stations aired “Transformation Age: Surviving a Technology Revolution with Robert X. Cringely”, link here.
Information Technology is now a $1.3 trillion dollar industry in the United States, and it facilitates everything else we do.
Mainframe, batch computer processing became a staple in the 1960s (the program shows a PDP 11); online developed in the 1970s. But “just in time” systems (including radio frequency ID, RFID revolutionized inventory and retail, to the point that the position and quantity of every item is always known.
The show presented the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, MN, and the 1993 project to automate all of its paper medical records, when it had invented the paper system decades before.
The program covered Second Life, almost like another parallel universe, and discussed the demise of the old newspaper business model and the effect of grassroots companies like Craigslist (the San Francisco house of the company is shown).
The program envisions a world in which everyone is monitored by digital devices, even worn on the body (who wants to shave for a Holter Monitor, anyway?; maybe wear conductive digital clothing instead.)
Wikipedia attribution link for Mayo Gonda building.
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