Kid Geek Masters His 1979 Computer & Predicts The Future
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- Опубліковано 29 бер 2024
- In 1979, when I was doing a television special for PBS on the coming of the information age, titled The Information Society, my team went to Cedar Rapids Iowa and just walked into a retail computer store and started filming. This boy and his dad were there to buy a computer. He is Jay Ehrlich and today, he is doing just fine in Chicago as a corporate executive not related to his computer skills. Thank you Jay Ehrlich and your dad.
Here is the two of the in a recent interview I did - • He Looks At His 12 yr....
In 1979, the adoption of computers in schools was still in its early stages, especially at the middle and high school levels. Many schools did not yet have dedicated computer courses or curricula. However, there were some pioneering schools and educators who recognized the importance of computer education and began to incorporate it into their teaching.
The personal computers available in 1979 were typically quite large and bulky compared to today's standards. The most popular personal computers of that time included the Apple II, the TRS-80 (or Radio Shack TRS-80), and the Commodore PET. These machines typically featured a built-in keyboard, a small monochrome monitor, and used cassette tapes or floppy disks for storage. They were primarily used for basic programming, word processing, and educational purposes.
It's challenging to provide an exact number of schools teaching computers in 1979, as it varied greatly depending on location, funding, and educational priorities. However, it's safe to say that computer education was still in its infancy in most educational institutions during that time.
In 1979, programming languages taught to middle school students were typically simpler and more beginner-friendly languages compared to those taught at higher educational levels. Some of the programming languages that might have been introduced to middle school students during that time include:
BASIC (Beginner's All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code): BASIC was one of the most commonly used programming languages in the late 1970s and early 1980s, particularly for personal computers like the Apple II, Commodore PET, and TRS-80. It was designed to be easy to learn and understand, making it suitable for beginners.
Logo: Logo was specifically designed for educational purposes, particularly for teaching concepts of programming to children. It featured a turtle graphics system, which allowed students to create drawings and designs using simple commands.
Pascal: While Pascal was a bit more advanced than BASIC, some middle and high schools introduced it as an introductory programming language. Pascal was known for its structured programming approach and was widely used in educational settings during the late 1970s and 1980s.
Fortran: Though less common in middle schools, some institutions may have introduced Fortran, especially in more advanced or specialized programs. Fortran was primarily used for scientific and engineering applications and was less beginner-friendly compared to BASIC or Logo.
In 1979, the personal computer market was still in its early stages, and there were several notable computers available, although none were from either Apple or Microsoft, as neither the Macintosh nor Microsoft Windows had been released at that time.
Apple II: Released in 1977, the Apple II was one of the most popular personal computers of the late 1970s and early 1980s. It featured color graphics, sound, and expansion slots, making it a versatile platform for both home and business use.
TRS-80 (Radio Shack TRS-80): Introduced in 1977 by Radio Shack, the TRS-80 was another popular personal computer of the era. It was available in several models and configurations, including one with a built-in monitor and keyboard.
Commodore PET: Released in 1977 by Commodore International, the PET (Personal Electronic Transactor) was one of the earliest personal computers on the market. It featured an all-in-one design with a built-in monitor and keyboard.
Atari 400/800: Introduced by Atari in 1979, the Atari 400 and 800 were home computers designed for gaming and educational purposes. They featured custom graphics and sound hardware and were compatible with a range of peripherals and software.
Texas Instruments TI-99/4A: Released by Texas Instruments in 1979, the TI-99/4A was a home computer with an innovative design and built-in BASIC programming language. It was popular for both gaming and educational software.
These computers ran a variety of operating systems and programming languages, but none of them were running macOS (then known as System Software for Macintosh) or Microsoft Windows, as those platforms were still in development. Instead, they typically used proprietary operating systems or variants of BASIC for programming and software development.
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Here they are today - father and son
ua-cam.com/video/UpXc6YSLrpM/v-deo.html
Thanks for the link, David Hoffman it's neat to see them years later and what became of them.
Please make a video about boinc distributed computing software
Thank you for this link
Thanks much! What a treat to see him looking at his 12 year old self. Flat out amazing. I was an elementary teacher when computers would invade schools. I had to take a 6 week class in computer skills but the problem was I didn't have one at home. To me, that was like taking a course in how to ride a bicycle without having one! Made no sense. I did buy a Gateway and yes it was MS Dos. It was trial and error on my part-- major. And the printer had that long roll of paper! Many ways to learn ( and teach,) but someone had to show me and not tell me. Boy have times and computers changed,! Life without one? No way. Thanks much for seeing this experience! I'm wowed.
AI sent me a message through Words With Friends game. So, he didn't comprehend quantum computation and its application at the time.
Message was on my tile board. I A I __ U B U The underline was a blank tile.
Plot twist: the kid was just playing Oregon Trail and laughing to himself at how impressed the adults were 😂
it was impressive for the time regardless
I remember playing Oregon Trail on the Apple computer in Elementary School also learned about how to use a computer first Apple has iPhones, MacBooks, Tablets, watches people use everyday expensive though.
And, to think I'm holding a computer in my hand as I watch this. Wow. I can remember being thrilled at holding a walkie talkie to talk with friends. No further than a mile, though. That was just the beginning.
David, your work is so valuable. I don't know if you've been approached to back up your entire collection but in my opinion, your work & collection is priceless and needs to be preserved for generations to come and you well compensated for your many contributions and to continue your work.
Id be happy to sign a petition to encourage the library of congress or a private institution
Sadly, no such petition exists as yet. It feels to me as though no one in a position of importance including inside UA-cam is paying any attention to what I have been doing. Hopefully someday.
David Hoffman filmmaker
I think Mark Laita were influenced by ppl like David's kind of journalism. Mark's series,"White Soft Under Belly," is focused on different ppl from all over and discovering their perception of life.
@@DavidHoffmanFilmmaker I'm paying attention! I'm and old fart that appreciates and remembers your content! not that it'll make any difference but I do appreciate your content and efforts, AND I remember! :)
@@DavidHoffmanFilmmakerThis is a good point. Maybe you should just call them yourself and ask about donating your films, or maybe copies of them. The Library of Congress already has a copy of every published book (if you look at the first few pages of any paper book you can find the LOC cataloging information); I think that if they have a copy of 50 shades of gray, then they certainly ought to have your stuff. I do know that they have initiatives and grants and things to develop their oral history collections. Story core on NPR is part of this and maybe you should be as well.
The Internet Archive might be good partners for preservation.
Amazing. He mentions a 3 day work week being a potential reality due to the advancement he was experiencing. However we are at a time that far exceeds what they predicted yet we are working more than ever!
He is not the CEO of any company.
David Hoffman filmmaker
That jumped out to me as well. The real rewards of technology have only been enjoyed by those at the top of our economies, while the average worker works more for less year after year. Here I am being excited about a 4 day work week catching on lol. By now we should have ubi to cover everyone's essential needs, while working would help people increase their purchasing power. The positive impacts of such a system would make our current system obsolete. But we can't have it because of greed and corruption.
This is a gem! If only he and his son ( you said both alive!,) would watch this and comment. Thank you David!!❤
@@DavidHoffmanFilmmaker oh, thought someone said he became a ceo or executive of some kind, thanks for letting me know
The richest man in Mexico was trying to push this idea too, saw a video of him making his argument in front of other million, billionaires. The majority want free time to spend it on drugs and party instead of using downtime to learn something and advance.
3 day work weeks would be nice, not enough people will benefit from it sadly.
My father is from Cedar Rapids! He grew up in the 80s and became a software programmer. He has a lot of great stories.
I was around the same age as Jay, and got my first computer an Atari 800XL in 1983. I remember wanting to program it, and I did a bit of BASIC, but eventually, 10yrs later I sold it. It gave me a lifelong love of computers and I studied Engineering. I am kinda glad I didn't become a programmer, it would be hard work, and you need to learn new languages all the time, but I bought another 800XL a few years back and now play with it to relive the nostalgia, as I turn 55 soon.
Not being a programer myself, i agree: but supposedly the programming languages are all similar and learning one, makes it easier to learn the other. I think its Python for robotics, C C+ or C++ for Apps software or games, or Java, HTML, and a bunch more. Ive always been curious about python, i think lego has some really great starter kits for robots and programming.
Just get a xbox or playstation. It's more fun trust me
How good was the Goonies game
In 1979 I was 18, but I was unable to get a computer till about 1982 when I turned 21. My first computer was commodore. I was a foster, and I didn't start working full time till I was 21 in 1982. After that I had many more and learned all about computers by then in college and trade school. I even built some of my own by the late 80s and early 90s. Today at 63 I just buy the parts and have someone with better eyes build them for me, lol. I enjoyed this video Dave, thanks for posting it.
wowww you are really behind so much great videos and photos, because I've seen this video before but like years ago when I was a kid.
It’s interesting to me that so many of the questions today about the use of A.I. were asked back then too, such as society’s growing need for technical skills, the impact of the technology on all fields, and the obsolescence of certain jobs
Very cool, David. Imagine teaching yourself computer programming when there was no other way! Would be nice to see that interview with them now. Thank you!😊❤
So cool you found them, always interesting to see where people end up decades later!
I recall hacking into the Pentagon in 1983, on my ZX Spectrum 48K ...
They called it the Christmas Hacking Incident!
Another great video Mr. Hoffman! Pretty wild to see opinions on the computing age in 1979. I saw the change first hand working in banking starting in the 1990’s, and in that field it really changed drastically. When I started you used to have tellers, new accounts rep, lending rep, etc. with advancements in computing those multiple individuals meant the entire process was handled by one person, so given the old saying if you can’t beat em, join em, I started working in IT for finance companies almost 10 years ago. Now with advancements in AI I’m finding the need to learn more and pivot to a world driven by AI.
Can't wait for the follow-up interview 45 years later !!
I love this footage! Thank you for sharing!
Damn, I just rediscovered your channel after over a year.
So glad to see you again!
I am glad you rediscovered me. I have added so many video clips since you were last here.
David Hoffman filmmaker
Thank you for such diligent and extensive efforts to preserve so much valuable content for history!
Looking forward to see the interview, thanks for your work David.
Brilliant footage. So prophetic.
I remember this one, David. Excellent one.
Great job!!!
Alam Turing created the first computer, and was thrown away because he was gay.
I remember when Steve Jobs, Apple, and Bill Gates, Microsoft were fighting each other , also in courts.
What happened? I would love to meet Jay.
Above all we need for future generations cooperation without competition.
🙏🌎❤️🌿🕊🎵🎶🎵
Good strife bad strife competition is not a bad thing
I love your work. Thank you
Very interesting. Thank you David.
I wish I had all those vintage posters. Man, I wish we could go back to 1979. I’d rather not have the technology we have now, well ever since my google glass died anyhow.
Thank you for this information
Wow!! Interesting Thank you David❤️
I look forward to that interview.
really love your stuff man
They were exciting times. It's nice to see you David and your carvings
Looking forward to it
"Computers were designed to eliminate repetition and tedium"
2005 Vanilla World of Warcraft launches...
In other news I remember trying to hack on my Vic-20 which wasn't connected with a modem so that kind of ended my brief career as a programmer / geek.
Must be amazing to be a documentary filmaker, you see so much history as its happening! Your a regular Plutarch
"To the point to where it was disturbing to our family" lmao me playing AOE2 all the time in the early 2000s garnered the same response from my family🤣
Notice he talked about having fun programming. There's more creativity involved there.
I remember this video and genius kid, have to wonder where he is today, I too got very involved in computers in the late 80's.
"me too i'm wondering where he is now" is something i would say if i didn't watch the video ^^
At the opening of the description I have a link to where he is today. Click it.
David Hoffman filmmaker
David did a follow up video on this. Eventually he lost interest in computers and is doing something else
I love tech and how we can literally see into the past ❤
David, your videos are so informative and entertaining. I've learned so much from your work and from all kinds of different ppl and their perspectives on life. We can learn so much if we can understand different ppl's views and how THEY perceive life. I feel like Mark Laita might have had a lot of influence from your kind of interest in ppl and their reality in his videos he calls,"Soft White Underbelly." You knew that this knowledge of other ppl's views need to be listened and exposed to everyone with an open and non-judgement mind.
While I admire the work of Mark, my work was done almost half a century before he came on the scene.
David Hoffman filmmaker
I lived through this time and was 19 when this video was made. Computers didn't change our lives all that much, the Internet did. At first it was great because computers and the Internet were considered impossible to be regulated. This was a fun time. However, once Government figured out a way to regulate everything you do with your PC and Internet use, we lost a whole ton of Personal Freedoms even those outside of the cyber world. Many of the young kids around the time of this video who were computer geeks and software pirates and computer hackers, were recruited by Uncle Sam, and paid insane amounts of money to use computers to regulate everything we do in our lives today!
i mean you still can.. but now you have to be smart to do it and hide from the government. back then you could learn a few lines of code and you were good to go. the world is way overpopulated and too much is at stake for it to not be regulated
@@dearmadeline If left to run it's course, overpopulation has a way of thinning itself out. It's Government regulation that keeps it growing.
Very interesting video! I recall that my elementary school (in St. James, near Smithtown in Suffolk County, Long Island) had a single computer (with dot matrix printer) around 1980. It was kept in a lab space and students were allowed to use it, though I can't remember exactly what we used it for. My parents eventually bought me my first computer, an Apple IIe, around 1984.
I love this Chanel!! I’m a new subscriber! ❤
Thank you for becoming a subscriber.
David Hoffman filmmaker
That would b great 2 c an interview w this kid 45 years later
ua-cam.com/video/UpXc6YSLrpM/v-deo.html
David Hoffman Filmmaker
I had a computer in 1981 called a VIC 20. I figured it out ok, but there was no internet then. but in 2024, with an iPhone and laptop that I have never understood, and AI and virtual reality and everything going on,
I am amazed at how technology is.
Crazy this kid didn’t end up working in the tech world!?
Yes. He says why in the interview I did with him 30+ years later - the URL posted on my description page.
David Hoffman filmmaker
Life is like that sometimes just because something holds your interest as a kid dosent mean it will carry into adulthood
@@DavidHoffmanFilmmakerwe know it's u writing the comment 😂
That was fun! 😊
I was in HS in 1979 but we were poor and I had never seen a computer.
I’m really surprised that you didn’t ask the kid what exactly he was doing on the computer. This was pre internet so what was he doing as he was typing away? This was way before you could scan photos into a computer. Way before being able to input video into a computer and edit. And way before music software had been developed to enable multi track recording and sequencing. Not sure if even word processing had advanced all that much. So what was he doing that made him so special?
He was doing nothing really useful nor advanced, just playing programming a simple game in BASIC. That's the only thing you could do on those personal computers anyway.
Using a computer used to require a lot of concentration, it looked like a joyless hobby. Today with a mouse and modern GUI using a computer is something you can do lazily, while talking to people on a stream. Or even more effortless than a 20th century laptop/desktop computer, just look at how effortless babies make using an iPad look.
The dad is talking here about some truck drivers not being able to use a computer "terminal" one day. Housewives who do or do not deal with computers. He couldn't imagine that one day we'd all have computers in our pockets, we'd all use them all day every day, and take it all for granted.
The way this was shot is really quite cool btw, I bet this style felt really modern for 70s journalism?
Hmm, what I remember is that early personal computers, with a BASIC preinstalled in their ROM, were far more easier to program. There was nothing useful to do with them. But they were absolutely easy to play with. Any kid could program them.
Hello from Cedar Rapids. We have what used to be Rockwell Collins. Five smells. Floods. Derecho epicenter. VÍTÁME VÁS!!!
As the human race advance in technology, it fascinates me on one hand through technology we human have done some good things and frustrate me on the other hand when technology is used by those with bad intention to do harm to others. stay safe out there David and all.
"Computers are designed to eliminate Tedium from our Lives"!!!
LOL😅
Where didn it all go wrong...?
World governments, propaganda, and accelerationism. Worlds gonna end soon.
They realized if we keep the tedium AND the technology, we can just let rich people make even more money than before
Oh and also censorship. My original comment was deleted with all the other reasons lol.
Spending more time programming than paying attention to the family )))
Lol.
Sounds familiar. ))
In every way they are right, however in everyway they are wrong... imagine that
Pretty sure me and my brothers had this haircut and shirt
3:00 How I feel every time I get on someone else's pc at work and they don't have file extensions enabled.
This was awesome. Wish I knew what I know now. Once I had to take computer courses in college all I wanted was to just get through it and make passing grades. Dumb and dumber. That’s me.
David, do you happen to have any interviews of yourself from back in the day?
I do. I have posted a few on my UA-cam channel from when I started my career but none of me as a child. Long before videotape.
David Hoffman filmmaker
I saw this movie.
The guy at 5:30 sounds like Jimmy Carter with a little less of the mid-west accent.
Did the first Iron Man photoshop young Robert Downey Jr’s face on that kid in the awards ceremony montage at the start?
For the amount of sunscribers, the views per video are super low. What gives?
No one mentioned the enormous amounts of money you spent over the years trying to stay up to date with the state of the art gear.
Is this the kid who, on a homemade computer, hacked Arcanet?
I wonder what Chet thinks about AI today!
Once u start using computers u cant stop he said. If he saw cyberpunk 2077.....
So what happened to that 3-day workweek?
Oh boy, if they only knew.
I didn't hear the kid make any predictions...
France was living in the future with minitel.
Ah fun times being a kid in the 80s with computers. One time I almost caused a global thermal nuclear war with a computer called WOPR.
Wow! The machine making things obsolete and the machine taking over statements definitely did not agree well.
what did he predict..? he just said a few words
3 years later ... the kid swapped his Sports Jersey, for a Pizza Cheese covered T-Shirt and Neckbeard?
Instead of dropping $2500 on that computer, if they had just put it in stock, they'd be worth about $120 million today.
Science is god
No, The Father, The Son and The Holy Ghost are God. You need to accept the traditional Catholic Faith to be saved.
@@BUCKINATORCHRIS Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil; that put darkness for light, and light for darkness; that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter!
i worship humans , they are creating stuff with science @@mountainmover777
Atheist can't seem to cognize that God, Father/Mother God, Creator Source, All That Is, is Science. The Spiritual is Science and Science is Spiritual.
But even greater than that the atheist has never cognized that God is not religion, and religion is not God.
God did not create the religions, the Human did. And the thing that the atheist is completely incapable of cognizing is being able to think and conceptualize a God independently of any religion associations.
The atheist rejects religion and the Bible, but at the same time only using the God of the Bible in determining whether God is real.
And coming to the conclusion that their own intellect is superior because they believe they applied sound reasoning and critical thinking.
Stupid is as stupid does.
Technology has indeed come a long way. Unfortunately there are many ways it causes problems. More is needed in cyber security to prevent hacking for ransom attacks, especially now that hospitals and businesses are so dependent on it.
Great content..If I could give you two things… I certainly would:
1. The Pulitzer Prize
2. Nobel Peace Prize
You certainly deserve both Sir!!
Thank you for those thoughts. I don't really need either of those prizes but I do need someone to support my effort financially since I can't keep going economically. That for me is a drag.
David Hoffman filmmaker