Jay Ehrlich was a 12-year-old kid in 1979 in Cedar Rapids Iowa. He was in a computer store with his dad looking to buy a new computer. Like most of us at that time, his dad didn't know anything about computers while Jay was something of an expert (we called them geeks) doing programming and creating early video games. I was making the documentary for television called The Information Society about the coming of the information age and the ending of the industrial age. At the time, more and more people were using computers for business activities that the public was not yet aware of. There were about 800,000 computers being used in the world at that time.
Of course, out in the Silicon Valley (it wasn't called that yet) Steve Jobs and Steve Woz had already founded Apple computers making home computers and they were for sale in this computer store. The local store manager knew what was coming and predicted it but just about everybody stepping into the store did not own a computer or really know what they were capable of (almost none of us did).
For many years after I posted the initial clip from my film on RU-vid, I did not know the name of this boy and his dad because my archive had burned in a fire so I had no written information. After several years, a subscriber found Jay and I connected with him and asked him if I could interview his dad and him again all these years later to look back on that time and what they had said and what had changed in the intervening years.
I enjoy seeing people's lives over time and every once in a while get the chance to interview someone who I had interviewed many years before. The results are always interesting.
Thank you Jay and dad. I would like to interview you both again 40 years from now.
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8 апр 2022
