Working Up

by Dwayne Phillips

We return to the era of the main computer center and waiting for computer time.

Way back in the previous millennium, I was leaving graduate school. While in school, I had access to a new 32-bit minicomputer (I think it was made by Perkin-Elmer if anyone else remembers that time). One problem was I had to be sitting in the computer room of our lab to use the minicomputer. I didn’t have to sign up for time on the machine as I was a chosen student and given access anytime I was awake. Still, I had to make the drive to the building.

Then I bought my on personal computer. It only had 16-bit words. It only had 640K of RAM. It only ran MS-DOS. It was only this and only that and only lots of things. The difference was that I owned it and it sat in my home.

I could run the software I was developing anytime I wanted. The software was limited by all the “only this and only that” of the computer, but it ran now.

When was the last time you had to sign up for computer time and had to wait your turn? I had to do so last week. My credits, or whatever they call them, on my chattering bot account ran out. I pay $20 a month, but there is a limit to how much I can chatter and agent and loop. When I hit the limit, I have to wait until Thursday morning to do anything. (Why Thursday? A mystery of the universe that remains a mystery.)

Once again, there is the big computer that runs everything fast — when it is my turn. And I guess I can run a chattering bot locally, but slow, but now, but slow.

We have come a long way and it took a long time to return to where we started.