Ai generated

I worked in the field of quality of work life for several decades. During that time, I served as an outside consultant to the Bell System while it was undergoing major technological change.

Bell Labs would introduce a new  device and the focus quickly turned to training workers to cope with it — often involving confusing, counterintuitive keyboards, terminals that blew hot air into their faces, and manuals written by and for engineers.   Gains in productivity were all too often accompanied by gains in job stress.

Back in my office, to track case studies, literature, and field notes, I used a manual card-sorting system popular at the time: the Royal McBee Keysort. Manual being the operative word. A thin rod — not unlike a knitting needle — could separate notched cards into categories. 

 

People were starting to talk about the new personal computers.  They were great at databases and, beause I was working in a high tech environment, I thought it might be a good way to learn this new technology. 

So I visited the first, and for a while, the only computer store in Manhattan, Byte Shop, and brought home an Exidy computer.

What I really want to share about this story are not the details about the computer, but how I from it.  How I learned about learning.

It became my first foray into Skunk Works. 

 

 

I learned a lot about computers by mastering my own.  The technology was not at intimidating. In fact, it was funky.  The Mechanics were familiar.  Data was stored on a Radio Shack cassette recorder. on the same kind of tapes that could hold music.  You loaded it by pushing the play button.