Teryl @ Work

When we look at the future, and what we want from our world of tomorrow, our point of departure is usually what is available today. So I took a step back into my childhood and tried to imagine what my future dreams would have been.    I was a bit of a day dreamer, and know that I rather shocked my Grade 6 teacher, and my mom, by saying I wanted to be buried at the North Pole, so that the worms wouldn’t get me.   Still waiting for Cryogenics or Cryonics What was I expecting? The question is would my 16 year old self recognise the world I now live in. She would certainly expect me to still be reading a lot She would not expect me to have a Kindle and an iPad, with hundreds of books downloaded but still belong to two print book clubs (the ladies are so nice, and we have such fun, and a little bit of wine) I know she would also be delighted by: Laser (hair removal and eye surgery, among other things) Microwave ovens Instant access to Google, she was...

My World of Tomorrow – Back to the Future The build up to the Business Connexion (BCX) event has really got me thinking back over the early days of working in the computer industry. As a fully fledged baby boomer, my career started when being a computer programmer still had a strong air of mystique. Computer rooms were gigantic, smoke free zones, limited to the chosen few. We hand wrote code, the punch room ladies punched it onto cards, and we booked time for testing. Testing time was very tight, the reason so many of us worked lots of overtime.    Much easier to get a testing slot after hours, and the computer rooms ran 24 hours shifts, anyway. Overtime usually started with drinks at Jimmy’s Tavern in Braamfontein, and led to a few punch card disasters! Carrying the punch cards for a big program was a delicate, balancing act.   If you dropped them, getting them back into order was a real challenge, even if you remembered to number t...

Speculating about what would really change our world is a constant conversation in IT companies.   Business Connexion (BCX) and  +Accsys being no exceptions. When BCX decided to launch an Expo and Conference around the topic, the conversations became really focused.    Personally, I am a Science Fiction and Fantasy junky, and that is, in part, because what was SciFi when I was 20 is now a daily reality.    My dad died in 1972.   He was a real futurist, always wondering what would be happening next, whether in buildings or technology.   Part of his legacy is that he taught me to think like that, too. If you re-read HG Wells, Jules Verne, Aldous Huxley and George Orwell, you will see what I mean.   And if you are lucky enough to be reading any of them for the first time, you will agree how truly prophetic those writers were.   And as for Da Vinci….. So what do the Accsys staff look for in th...