on computer tech and road crews

and the choke points of daily life

It’s that time of year again: Construction season.

Back in the late nineties and early oughts, when we worked with a computer, every day felt like construction season.

No.

There were no cranky people holding signs and scowling miserably peering out from the screens. These people with their signs and the crews they protect are choke points that stall and freeze the flow of humanity.

Traffic these days seems to grind from one road crew to another. The flow of driving is tough to find. It’s more a matter of popping from one frozen moment to the next. Each construction site is a choke point.

There were a lot a choke points that caused things to slow down, freeze or crash back in the late 90’s when computers began exploding into personal and popular use.

Speed mattered. Ram speed. Bus speed. Video card speed. Processor speed. Landspeeder. And then there was the internet. That was a massive choke point until the first ‘high speed / DSL’ tech came along.

It all mattered a whole lot.

Slowly though…