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I can't imagine living in the 1980's and watching the computer revolution come to pass, to know that it would then become in this era in the 2020's that the internet would not only be standard but fast enough for us to send messages to places like Australia and China in seconds is still amazing to me, and I was not born in the 80's. Did people living in the 80's even consider that this stuf could even be possible? #Technology
#technology
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David Goldfield

I grew up in the '80s and we were definitely aware that the computer revolution was happening. While we didn't have the Internet, we had access to online communities. Some were local via bulletin board systems, others were globally connected via networks like Fidonet, which connected BBS's across the world with various message forums which were referred to as echoes, not to mention the larger online services like Compuserve, Prodigy, etc., which provided access to all types of services, such as newspapers. I personally didn't forsee the rise of computer-based phones with AI and OCR, although I think that visionaries like Ray Kurzweil did forsee a time when OCR would fit in your pocket. I'm sure there were some very tech-savvy people back then who knew where all of this was likely heading. I personally didn't but I was far from being a visionary. 😀
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Bruce Toews

@DavidGoldfield No, but its predecessors were, and you could see what was coming when you tried that. The very first Braille 'n Speak, to me, was an absolute piece of crap. No offense, David. But by the early nineties I really wanted one. The tape-based VersaBraille was an absolute marvel back in 1984, and the disk-based VersaBraille didn't have the time to live up to its considerable potential because the new kids on the block, like the Braille 'n Speak, were so much more portable.
@David Goldfield
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Bruce Toews

@DavidGoldfield It was a lot more than sex chat line, Mr. Gutterboy, there were things like the Talking Yellow Pages, most TV and radio stations had an interactive phone line, one realty company let you browse for appartment rentals over the phone, later there was Tellme, we had (I think we still have it) a highway line where you punch in the highway number and you get the road reports for that highway, you could get the correct time by dialialing a number, you could find out the schedule for any given bus stop by calling a number and find out if any buses were running late, there was a really cool service called Dial a Jewish Story where you'd get a Jewish story for children read to you each week, and on and on.
@David Goldfield
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Chad Blanco

Try putting messages on tape, and putting that in the mail, then waiting... To get it. That's how people communicated back then. I qrew up where wi-fi was a thing. But I was old enough to know where we came from, and believe me, its been a huge leap. Right now, I'm typing this on my phone. In braille, I never, ever thought that would be possable. Todays kidds just don't get it.
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Chad Blanco

Yeah, your young. try growing up with no phone, and using your parents phone to call your friends. Not to mention, all phones back then were very tactile. When accessibility came to the touchscreen, some people, me included, thought it would be a joke. nope. Phones are powerful enough, to be what you want in a pockit computer. I don't use a pc at all, unless I'm working.