We Live in the Golden Age of Computer Science
By Kalman Toth, M.Phil., M.Phil., MCDBA, MCITP

July 23, 2005

Finally we reached a stage in Computer Science that can be defined as the Golden Age. It means that we are satisfied with our computer systems at work and at home.

Personally at home I arrived into the Gold Age when I installed a high-speed cable modem. That was the final piece missing. I am satisfied with my LAN network. In the 80's I was working on a project at Chase Manhattan Bank, which had a less capable ARCNET network. It is not even worth mentioning how much less capable were the Datapoint workstations.

I am satisfied with my high-speed cable modem. Rarely fails, the 24/7 phone line support from Cablevision is really good. The phone modem, which I still have for backup, was not satisfactory. While all parties involved claimed 56K baud performance, most of the time was more like 20K baud, annoyingly slow. With my high-speed modem I am able to tele-commute and control database servers thousands of miles away.

I am satisfied with my color inkjet printer. Cartridges are expensive, but the result is perfect. Laser printers did so-so job prior to inkjets. They were black and white only and quality started deteriorating after a certain number of pages.

I am satisfied with my workstations. Lots of memory, high speed, CD-ROM, DVD players and burners, excellent graphics, video and audio recording and playback.

I am satisfied with the LCD flat panel monitor. The CRT monitors prior to the flats were becoming heavier and heavier and quite bulky as you climbed up in size. Probably you got a good dose of radiation as well.

Overall satisfaction is defined with the lack of dissatisfaction. Am I really dissatisfied with something? Not as far personal or professional computer systems concerned.

In the 80's we were just dreaming about this Golden Age. The biggest drawback at that time was the lack of high-speed communications and the Internet. There were private networks, mostly slow, something like 2048 baud. They were limited to the transmission of data. To transmit digital voice you needed at least 8K bandwidth.

We were dreaming about software transmitted electronically instead on floppies. Supporting customers through high-speed connections, like Webex today, instead of flying across America or the world. We were dreaming about seeing movies though high-speed cables instead of driving to VCR movie rental places. This one still in the works, but partially a reality.

My first computer experience at the University of Budapest was with a transistor-based computer. Paper punch tape input and output with hole punches. Teletype terminal for punching the tape and reading the output. On Wall Street I worked with CDC 3300 vacuum tube computer, which took up a huge room. The 029-keypunch machine defined the IBM world of the 70-s. Quite a noisy beast. The image of it is from Columbia University's archive where I used it as a student. At Pan-Am airline there were hundreds keypunch operators in gigantic halls entering flight reservation information on punch cards. The cards were fed into computers through high-speed card readers. High-speed printers printed the tickets and the reports. The IBM technology of punch cards and paper printers was quite impressive as far as speed concerned. The price of the systems was into the millions of dollars. When first I met Bill Gates, Microsoft had only 20 employees. The micro talk at that time centered on 16K or 32K of memory, 8-bit computer versus 16-bit.

What comes after the Golden Age of Computer Science? The next stage is the Age of Artificial Intelligence. Naturally we will be happily unemployed and can rely on our personal robot to prepare and serve a gourmet dinner.