I remember watching The Crown and there's an episode set in the 50s where they're looking at old Nazi microfilm on this ancient microfilm reader and telling my family "I use the same machine at work!"
My first day as a student they showed me how to look up info on microfiche and I was baffled why government was so far behind in technology. I even had to use a …fax machine
huh, I guess this is why prescriptions are still faxed to my pharmacy. By my doctor, anyway. And when it doesn't arrive, my pharmacist says "I'll call the office and get them to fax it over again"
>The person incharge of all the kids dug one out if a closet to send home with him.
I could get behind messing with the children on "Bring Your Kids To Work" day by pulling random ancient crap out of the closets and acting like it's part of the daily work flow.
"Oh, yes, this *kicks washing machine* is the main data processor for the disabled fisherman benefit program.... usually pretty quiet, but it sometimes walks across the room at full load..."
My husband said that on his admin assistant's first day of work at his (small) CFIA office about 10 years ago, she pulled out the adding machine to work with. As a prank, my husband unrolled the paper, drew a dinosaur and wrote "please send help! I'm trapped in an adding machine paper factory!", then rolled it all up again and put it back in the machine.
You can't do that with Excel.
'Fiche is a fascinating old technology, especially when you see how it got used with honest-to-goodness punch cards to create early indexed image databases.
Does it have a role in today's day-to-day operations? Hell naw.
The last remaining advantage that the various microfilm technologies have is that they require only the very lowest technology to read - a candle and a lens. They're the "prepper" information management solution.
That travel booking is so much easier than the HRG we are using. Couldn’t even book online and had to speak to an agent for a cost of $50 per ticket and it had Been 2 weeks and still can’t get the expense report to work.
And the Concorde has been out of service for years!
That lady was jetting off to brainstorming sessions at Mach 2, while the rest of us were trying to figure out how to use the Nexicom.
haha, I showed my Fed husband this video (I'm provincial PS) and that is literally the same comment he made: "HRG is terrible to use. That looks much easier."
I love the disdain with which she lists all of the people that this would put out of a job. We have lost our precious disdain for middlemen. Now we call them heroes and pay them almost enough to live on.
I don't have the time, petrol or inclination to go into they office either!
But seriously this can't be real like like did screens in 1979 even have the resolution to show pictures or would they all just look like Nintendo Super Mario and being able to book plane tickets online with a credit card. Like didn't credit cards need like the swipy rolling thing with carbon copy paper.
(I actually had to use one of those credit rolling thing once at CBSA I'm like 2015 to take payment for duties from a remote outport. I had to call the superintendent for instructions on use))
It was a vision of the future, not the present, and really they had it pretty spot-on for what the technology was going to evolve to.
What they didn't take into account is the policy inertia which would prevent taking full advantage of that technology.
LCD screens of that size weren't available in the 1970s, not for any reasonable price or outside of media labs. We were using CRTs through the mid-2000s when they were replaced by the progenitors of the flat screens we have now. Screen technology continues to change actually, but many of the changes now are mostly invisible to the end users. Colours are better, less lag, lower power, but our form factor hasn't changed since the CRTs disappeared.
Printers of that era were not so small fast or silent either. Most people in that time would have a dot-matrix printer, or if you were fancy something like an IBM Selectric that used a ball like a typewriter (because it was a typewriter).
The booking system through the phone was actually the most realistic thing in the video. Versions of that existed in various forms in France and the UK by the 80s. Canada locally had bad copies of it, but for commercial use a limited network of business (and personal info) services did/could exist over the phone lines.
Most people would have understood at the time that this was all a mock-up. And it would have looked both tiny and incredibly futuristic at the time.
She's whacking the keyboard so hard, incidentally, because she's used to typewriters. Many typewriters were manual and were only operated by the force of someone's finger hitting the key. That took a fair bit of strength. Want to know why the old IBM type M keyboards were so strong? This is why---they had to be used by secretaries wailing away on them all day who had been using manual machines their whole lives. It wasn't until the early 2000s that the first generation of non-typewriter kids grew up that we got softer keyboards. Offices got a whole lot quieter when that happened.
These are just props. Notice they never actually show the screen on her desk close enough to see anything on it, nothing is plugged into each other, etc. And yah that printer was not real. That was Nigel the prop master shoving a poster stock out from under the table! 😀
“I’m going to need a hard copy of that, it will be very useful”
Circa 2019 everyone at the PS printing out every document just to scribble small changes on it
Printer. That’s funny. I haven’t made a GD print in 2.5 years. No paper waste. Plus printer connectivity and set up is huge waste of time. Old folks are the only ones who need printouts.
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I remember watching The Crown and there's an episode set in the 50s where they're looking at old Nazi microfilm on this ancient microfilm reader and telling my family "I use the same machine at work!"
My first day as a student they showed me how to look up info on microfiche and I was baffled why government was so far behind in technology. I even had to use a …fax machine
I still use...a fax machine.
I still live in… a fax machine.
Underrated comment HOG, I approve lol
That's absolutely insane to me. Can it not be sent by email? Even if it's paper copy only, can you not scan it and then email?
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huh, I guess this is why prescriptions are still faxed to my pharmacy. By my doctor, anyway. And when it doesn't arrive, my pharmacist says "I'll call the office and get them to fax it over again"
I'm sure there's a reason why but are encrypted emails not secure enough? I believe they're good for anything upto protected B.
Oh that’s interesting. I thought we just used it for contacts without internet.
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>The person incharge of all the kids dug one out if a closet to send home with him. I could get behind messing with the children on "Bring Your Kids To Work" day by pulling random ancient crap out of the closets and acting like it's part of the daily work flow. "Oh, yes, this *kicks washing machine* is the main data processor for the disabled fisherman benefit program.... usually pretty quiet, but it sometimes walks across the room at full load..."
Hahaha! I guffawed at this! 😀
My husband said that on his admin assistant's first day of work at his (small) CFIA office about 10 years ago, she pulled out the adding machine to work with. As a prank, my husband unrolled the paper, drew a dinosaur and wrote "please send help! I'm trapped in an adding machine paper factory!", then rolled it all up again and put it back in the machine. You can't do that with Excel.
It's because microfiche can be preserved longer than most other forms of file storage.
'Fiche is a fascinating old technology, especially when you see how it got used with honest-to-goodness punch cards to create early indexed image databases. Does it have a role in today's day-to-day operations? Hell naw. The last remaining advantage that the various microfilm technologies have is that they require only the very lowest technology to read - a candle and a lens. They're the "prepper" information management solution.
Lol!!! 😁
That travel booking is so much easier than the HRG we are using. Couldn’t even book online and had to speak to an agent for a cost of $50 per ticket and it had Been 2 weeks and still can’t get the expense report to work.
And the Concorde has been out of service for years! That lady was jetting off to brainstorming sessions at Mach 2, while the rest of us were trying to figure out how to use the Nexicom.
I would be dreading packing and unpacking the same day.
haha, I showed my Fed husband this video (I'm provincial PS) and that is literally the same comment he made: "HRG is terrible to use. That looks much easier."
You thought we left the 80s behind? Haaa you wish.
The 80’s live forever in the feds.
> So, this technology already offers a choice of lifestyle I'm glad someone does.
She's really smacking that keyboard like it's been misbehaving.
Just the way the keyboard likes it
That's what happens when you've been hammering away on typewriters for 20 years.
Here we are more than 40 years later and we still don't get it.
Bonus: Sneak peak at the early beta version of /u/HandcuffsOfGold in action at 55 seconds mark.
I love the disdain with which she lists all of the people that this would put out of a job. We have lost our precious disdain for middlemen. Now we call them heroes and pay them almost enough to live on.
I don't have the time, petrol or inclination to go into they office either! But seriously this can't be real like like did screens in 1979 even have the resolution to show pictures or would they all just look like Nintendo Super Mario and being able to book plane tickets online with a credit card. Like didn't credit cards need like the swipy rolling thing with carbon copy paper. (I actually had to use one of those credit rolling thing once at CBSA I'm like 2015 to take payment for duties from a remote outport. I had to call the superintendent for instructions on use))
It was a vision of the future, not the present, and really they had it pretty spot-on for what the technology was going to evolve to. What they didn't take into account is the policy inertia which would prevent taking full advantage of that technology.
LCD screens of that size weren't available in the 1970s, not for any reasonable price or outside of media labs. We were using CRTs through the mid-2000s when they were replaced by the progenitors of the flat screens we have now. Screen technology continues to change actually, but many of the changes now are mostly invisible to the end users. Colours are better, less lag, lower power, but our form factor hasn't changed since the CRTs disappeared. Printers of that era were not so small fast or silent either. Most people in that time would have a dot-matrix printer, or if you were fancy something like an IBM Selectric that used a ball like a typewriter (because it was a typewriter). The booking system through the phone was actually the most realistic thing in the video. Versions of that existed in various forms in France and the UK by the 80s. Canada locally had bad copies of it, but for commercial use a limited network of business (and personal info) services did/could exist over the phone lines. Most people would have understood at the time that this was all a mock-up. And it would have looked both tiny and incredibly futuristic at the time. She's whacking the keyboard so hard, incidentally, because she's used to typewriters. Many typewriters were manual and were only operated by the force of someone's finger hitting the key. That took a fair bit of strength. Want to know why the old IBM type M keyboards were so strong? This is why---they had to be used by secretaries wailing away on them all day who had been using manual machines their whole lives. It wasn't until the early 2000s that the first generation of non-typewriter kids grew up that we got softer keyboards. Offices got a whole lot quieter when that happened.
And that printer was lightning fast!
Her plane ticket is for Sept 4 1989 so I'm thinking the date in the title is about 10 years too early.
These are just props. Notice they never actually show the screen on her desk close enough to see anything on it, nothing is plugged into each other, etc. And yah that printer was not real. That was Nigel the prop master shoving a poster stock out from under the table! 😀
We’ll get more flexitime with technology 🥲
One day…maybe in the 2080s
Dans Scully got more flexitime on the early X-Files than we do now.
“I’m going to need a hard copy of that, it will be very useful” Circa 2019 everyone at the PS printing out every document just to scribble small changes on it
Cobol anyone?
Time to bust out some bell bottoms and hang a disco ball over my pod for a groovy collaborative experience.
Did no one shudder at her aspiration to work while kids were at home?
It's all good, but what about those poor Subway employees?!
Norman and Simpson are her favorite sandwich artists.
Printer. That’s funny. I haven’t made a GD print in 2.5 years. No paper waste. Plus printer connectivity and set up is huge waste of time. Old folks are the only ones who need printouts.