I am happy to have been working while personal computers have been in existence. My first one was a Texas Instruments TI99/4A. A friend and I exchanged our programming savvy via cassette tapes. In those early days, other than a few games I actually had a Real Estate program cartridge that had quite an extensive investment analysis feature. Back then I thought this was amazing and still do. My investment projections created by this little $120 computer paid for itself at least a hundred fold. That was in 1970's dollars mind you. I had a VW Karman Ghia and could fill its 10.6 gallon tank for under 3 bucks with Sunoco 260.
The fear back in those days was that the paper companies were going to go out of business because the little marvels could store so much information as they developed into sophisticated business machines.
Photo Courtesy of NJNP / Scott Lituchy: A cluttered office at UMDNJ in Newark
What inspired me to write this was an article on MSN about departing long term Congressional members who have the task of cleaning out their offices. Imagine 30 years of notes, contracts, bills, payment receipts, legislative drafts and related minutia surrounding you. To some it may look like "Damn, this is a busy guy or gal." but the reality is it's poor planning and shines a window of truth to our political problems. How do you organize your "deals". What medium do you use to organize those files? With access to clouds, terabyte sized hard drives, CD's, flash drives, etc. are you using them to rid yourself of the clutter?
What really caught my eye in the photo is what appears to be a Kodak Carousel slide tray. I also have several in 80 and 140 capacity sizes. The problem is trying to find a working projector to easily view them on. That's technology at its best circa 1979 having corded remote control with forward, backward and pause.
Champion Paper Company merged with International Paper to become Champion International over a decade ago and still grows strong. Hammermill remains as one of the most identifiable office paper brands. What about the lowly file cabinet, I don't see them disappearing anytime soon.
Progams like Form Simplcity and Transaction Desk along with the advent of digital signatures have done wonders for storing our transactions conveniently and clutter free but only when we utilize them. I'm at fault too but am inspired to make 2015 a paperless year. A couple of 16GB thumb-drives and a stack of CD's should get me started rather nicely. Have a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!
Comments(20)