This is my first computer, not a processor in sight and programmed with an awful lot of wire this was the primer to my sense of logic. It took a lot to create fun games from this device but I diligently did so, until the contacts wore so much that the device became unusable.My first encounter with a "real" computer was in the electronics lab at sixth form. This computer had been home build by the electronics lab technicians but was not part of the official computing department which had just one Commodore PET computer. This was good because I was not considered academically capable of working with computers (more on that later)!.
On graduating sixth form I decided not to go to university but to go directly into the work force and I joined British Rail as an engineering apprentice. My first pay slip bought me a Commodore Vic 20 computer and I mercilessly hammered its 3.5K of ram writing programs in glorious 16(ish) colours. This computer was followed by a BBC Model B computer that mutated through its days with me to the point where I regularly had to open it and reconnect the multitude of wires and eproms that had found a home inside it. I moved to the Atari ST because Commodore couldn't seem to release the Amiga and I just wanted a faster computer (the Amiga actually arrived a couple of months later). Finally in 1990 I got my first PC an 8086 cast off from some business somewhere.
All during these first 10 years in my working environment as an Electrical engineer I was the computer guru. It wasn't part of my job but I was the one that was always expected to make the computers work and deliver , and I was more than happy with that but wanted more. In 1991 I officially moved into the IT industry as the department I was in at the time realised they could not keep the computers running without me. I quickly decided if I was to leave Electrical engineering behind I should have some computing qualifications so I began to study for a degree on a day release basis. In 1997 I graduated with a first class honours degree and the prize for best student in the school of computing, saving them prizes by combining the best full time and part time student! I also got more points for my final project than the guy that got the best final project award but I guess they didn't want a one man show :-).
At the same time things at work were moving on the privatisation of the railway had resulted in my department being picked up by a private company. This same company acquired a number of other railway departments and combined them into a railway division. Working under a new manager I worked to create a system that integrated all these departments into one whole within the parent company network. For the first time in the companies history more than 1000 people could roam sites and still login. A few years later the company decided to do the same for all it's staff and it was only natural that I should be drafted into that effort. These were challenging times and the implementation was not easy, worse the installation of our first site was marred by world events. I drove home from Bristol pouring tears for half the journey not for the failure of the IT project but for the sight of two collapsing towers etched forever on my mind.
The implementation of the IT system bedded down but the parallel implementation of a new finance system was not so lucky. In the end this initiated a shuffle in the IT department that saw me promoted to the leadership team with a staff of 20ish right in the middle of financial times that required the company for the first time ever to make people redundant. I spent my 40th birthday in London telling people their jobs had gone, not a time that I am likely to forget!
Things soon began to settle down though and I progressed to a strategic role helping the company to understand what was happening in the IT industry and how this would affect the way that the company works. I presented to conferences of senior staff communicating how the approaching waves of technology comfortable workers would change the face of what we do, how centralised cloud systems would replace the currently accepted file server based systems.
What I have seen in my career so far is a progression from centralised mainframe computing to distributed computing that is now beginning to reverse back towards centralised computing. This version of centralised computing though is different from the last, last time there were self appointed guardians controlling how the central systems were used. Now these centralised systems are enabling the users to do anything, exposing massive computing power unaffordable to a single individual and levelling the gap between big companies and small. A real change is coming, one that can change everything if politics, legal action, FUD and personal agendas can be prevented from stopping it. This could deliver the kind of computing environment that Spock would be familiar with and if done right could even empower the human race to better things.
