Dan Bricklin / Image via Wikipedia

Dan brought out his new book, Bricklin on Technology, a compilation of his blogs, podcasts and essays over the last decade.

He read from the book -- from his old blog posts -- and illustrated his talk with pictures from the East Coast birthplace of computing around Route 128 near Boston back in the 60s, 70s and 80s. Dan unrolled ancient scrolls from the before-time: DEC minicomputers, dumb terminals, the Apple II, the revolutionary Harris 2200 page layout machine, the first IBM PC and some promo videos for spreadsheet programs that eclipsed VisiCalc, Lotus 1-2-3 and Microsoft Excel. The audience roared at the 1980s dweebs in three piece suits dancing to a pre-Windows jingle as Dan told about inventing the spreadsheet in a wet basement in Massachusetts. In the background were Gates and Jobs but also the armies of hopeful start-ups, brilliant programmers, careful CFOs, lucky salesmen and visionary inventors who drove computing onto every desk and into every home in those years.

Dan's been there and done that. While he prototyped his great invention on a minicomputer and coded it for MS-DOS and cashed out before Windows, he got back up on the horse and founded Slate, an early tablet computer start-up, and Trellix, an early blog-enabling firm. Last night, he mused about new opportunities in gesture interfaces, multi-user networked apps and the future of mobile computing.

Throughout his talk, Dan would mention some tech -- like the 2200 -- and ask the audience if they'd ever heard of it. Response there was none. The mixed crowd of greybeard engineers, grasping entrepreneurs and biz dev naifs knew little about the roots of the industry that they serve. For them, the world was born with Windows 95 or Netscape or Google or Facebook or the iPhone.

I've always felt that that reaction was fine. I've always tried to avoid chewing the fat with old-timers about punched cards, mag tape and the good old days of Atex and Wang. Whatever nostalgia buzz you get, it's irrelevant that a terrabyte used to be unthinkable and that a computer used to cost more than a BMW. We're all going to live in the future where none of that old junk matters.

And yet.  Humans have been crafting tools since the beginning, and there's a lot we can learn from the way we did things in the past. (Those who've never read Santayana are doomed to repeat him.) The iPhone didn't spring fully formed from the head of Zeus, it's the evolution of a lot of ideas that have been rattling around for forty or fifty years.

But it's hard to see the big picture when you're struggling in the day-to-day and your head is too full of what is rather than what could be. Friday's payroll or the next quarter or your investors' liquidity event is a mere milestone on a long path. Folks like Dan remind us that it's not whether you make Gates money or Jobs money or Page/Brin money, it's what you invent, what you build and what you leave behind.

It's important work. Reviewers read schools' applications containing narrative descriptions of programs of study and participate in site visits to schools to observe the programs in action.

We need folks from real life to make sure the kids are getting what they need. Do one school. Do many schools. But get involved. Review the paperwork in May and June; visit the school in the Fall.

The hot programs that need reviewing by the end of June are:

• Medical Laboratory and Assisting Program in Biotechnology
• Academy of Hospitality & Tourism
• Commercial Photography
• Construction Technology, Carpentry, Plumbing
• Culinary Arts
• Graphics & Illustration
• Heating, Ventilation and Air Conditioning
• Nursing Assistant
• Practical Nursing
• Transit Technician
• Vision Technology

... but there are hundreds of programs that could use a thorough review by people with experience in business and industry. If you work in these fields -- or know somebody who does who's amenable -- get an email to the fabulous Reina Utsunomiya at the New York City Department of Education: RUtsunomiya@schools.nyc.gov. (If you need convincing or stroking, contact me: JPowers@IN3.ORG, 718-499-1884.)

Here's your chance to quit Twittering and do some good, face-to-face. You'll be surprised by how many smart, dedicated teachers are doing truly great things to get kids ready for the world. And they really need your help.

(For some examples about the ways industry gets involved with education, see our Graphics Industry Advisory sites at GTexchange.org)

The Internet has always featured user-generated content: home pages, email, chat lines, fan fiction, blogs, wall postings and the Fifth Circle of Hell -- wrathful and sullen comment threads. But the public Internet also delivers exabytes of professionally-generated content: the academic, journalistic, literary and -- most recently -- cinematic. It's got people we don't like, ideas we're afraid of, philosophies we haven't considered, chances we're not ready to take. It's life. The world. Everything.

Social networks carve up the Net into special interest groups so we mainly see the people who think like we do. No wonder the marketers and spammers are all over social media: we do their research work for them by lining up into the correct psychographic. I think I prefer a life that's not so easily pigeonholed.

I've just updated the IN3 think piece Age & IT Experience that plots the current age of managers, employees and customers against the big developments in information technology. It's a good party starter: find your age when the IBM PC was launched, when streaming media happened, when Google Maps came out. Try to imagine how people from other life experiences feel about tech, and try to avoid the ageist notion that your cohort is the only one that matters, the only one that deeply understands.

It's a different kind of diversity with wide variations in adoption rates, dexterities, familiarity with digital concepts, comfort levels. Everybody comes from a different place on the map, and we'll all fall off the chart eventually as technology passes us by. With the aging workforce, maybe we should add columns for 65-, 75- and 85-year-olds. After all,we start with COBOL in 1960.

The tech-cultural column is very subjective, with headlines from politics and pop culture. Some companies customize the chart with their own industry milestones, and I can imagine versions for healthcare, education and politics. What do you think?

When we analyze social media, what are we comparing it to?  What do we call the other kind of media?

A Wikipedia entry suggests industrial media, but that seems mainly based on the expense of old media production tools and the ownership of the means of production. I do like industrial meaning part of the media industry, implying professionally-trained content creators and managers. Professional media makes the same point.

Other familiar modifiers like traditional or conventional don't define what we're talking about in any concrete way. Mass media or broadcast media come close but suggest huge scale that's not always there. A book of poetry that sells 1,000 copies is definitely not social media and it's not mass media.

Most definitions of social media incorporate user participation, user-generated content. Participatory media is a nice term, but is non-participatory media the opposite? Besides, a lot of user-generated content is meta-data: the most emailed story, the most downloaded song, the most linked post. It's just surveillance, not true participation.

And how is a blog part of social media? Free blogging software is a de-skilled method of producing web pages, but is cheap and easy the mark of social media? Or is audience participation the key: does enabling comments or mashing-up an RSS feed make a blog social?

Here's a more controversial suggestion. Social media is a walled garden that includes my friends and generally excludes the public. Even in open feeds like Flickr and Twitter, my content is concealed in an avalanche of traffic from anyone who doesn't explicitly follow me or search my key words. Getting in with the in-crowd is definitely a big part of the social scene.

Maybe the opposite of social media is open media.

What do you think?

1. Air travel sucks, so fix it.
2. ROI dominates, so prove it.
3. Virtual meetings encroach, so out-dazzle.
4. Carbon scolds rule, so ante up.
5. Demagogues bluster, so head 'em off.

We all hate the aggravations and costs of travel, and there are people who think live events can be replaced by webinars and e-meetings. And recently, there's been a lot of noisy indignation from politicians and headline writers about conferences, sponsorships and other corporate events booked by financial firms before the Crash, prompting the U.S. Travel Association to churn out press releases and talking points (PDF) about the economic value of meetings, events and incentive travel.

Business is going to get worse before it gets better, but like they say, "When there's blood in the street, there's money to be made.

Since Google is not a healthcare provider, the privacy restrictions of HIPPA, the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 don't apply. Health IT security guru Fred Trotter describes why this is a good thing, and we went brainstorming to see how open architecture might affect wellness, sex, eldercare, insurance and other health concerns.

Read Google Health 2018: Best Case Scenarios.

Read Google Health 2018: Worst Case Scenarios.

The glass is half-full or half-empty. Add your comments on the www.HealthcareNBIC.org blog. 

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