20 years ago today people were very scared about what was about to happen to the Middle East. This was about two weeks before the first Gulf War erupted, and a lot of people thought (correctly) that Iraq would try to drag Israel into it.
I remember two technological developments that year: I saw email for the first time at the Boston public broadcaster WGBH, and one of the larger American airlines installed phones in the backs of economy seats (I still see them every now and then, but don't think they work anymore). The calls were expensive as hell.
Some people had car phones, and "beepers" had spread out from professional occupations to youth culture (the Tribe Called Quest song "Sky Pager" references this) but I did not know anyone who had a mobile phone in the US in 1990. I saw my first mobile phone in London in 1991.
GUIs were very widespread on campuses, but there were still a surprising amount of command-line based software being used in the workplace. At one of my first jobs at a UK record label in 1991 they had me using Word Perfect (?) which involved green text on a black screen, and lots of keyboard shortcuts. Aside from the email example mentioned earlier, every business I dealt with in 1990-1991 used faxes or the post to send documents.
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20 years ago today people were very scared about what was about to happen to the Middle East. This was about two weeks before the first Gulf War erupted, and a lot of people thought (correctly) that Iraq would try to drag Israel into it.
I remember two technological developments that year: I saw email for the first time at the Boston public broadcaster WGBH, and one of the larger American airlines installed phones in the backs of economy seats (I still see them every now and then, but don't think they work anymore). The calls were expensive as hell.
Some people had car phones, and "beepers" had spread out from professional occupations to youth culture (the Tribe Called Quest song "Sky Pager" references this) but I did not know anyone who had a mobile phone in the US in 1990. I saw my first mobile phone in London in 1991.
GUIs were very widespread on campuses, but there were still a surprising amount of command-line based software being used in the workplace. At one of my first jobs at a UK record label in 1991 they had me using Word Perfect (?) which involved green text on a black screen, and lots of keyboard shortcuts. Aside from the email example mentioned earlier, every business I dealt with in 1990-1991 used faxes or the post to send documents.
EDIT: added beeper/mobile phone/GUI/fax recollections