The Information Age

[BarryBobPosthole]

Old Wild Bill McGowan was the founder of MCI and had failed at a couple of businesses when he bought a St Louis to Chicago microwave system. I went to work forthem a short time later and it was one of the luckiest breaks I've ever fell into. My employee number was in the 700s.
Anyway, Bill coined the term Information Age and talked about how the availability of data would transform us. He was saying this in the 70s.

It made me think of him while I was watchong the nightly news. It occurred to me that every day I know about significant weather everywhere in the world. I used to not know this. How far we've come!

There's other stuff too. You get the idea. I think there'll be a pushback at some point. I know I've turned my filters further up. I may even start writing letters. I'm serious. We can't handle this much truth. He was right!

BKB

[Thumper]

I had an uncle who worked for Worldbook Encyclopedia. The "Information Age" put him out of business.

My grandfather was a typewriter salesman. The "Computer Age" forced him to retire.

If you don't stay up with the times, you can become a dinosaur overnight.

[Thumper]

Ya' got me to a'thinkin' with that post Postie. My grandfather worked for George Stuart which was a small office supply store in Orlando and eventually grew to be the biggest in the state. Growing up, if anyone in Orlando mentioned "office supplies" ... the name George Stuart was the name that would come up. George got old and was a bit slow keeping up with the times when computers came out, so his sons entered the business to try catching up with the times ... but when places like Staples, Office Depot, Sam's and Costco came around ... they became the straws that "broke the camel's back". Anyway, the post I made above about my grandfather made me curious and I did a net search to see if the place even exists anymore. It looks like they held on for a few years but finally fell by the wayside ... like most Mom & Pop stores.

Found this on the net from an article written in the 80's:

To George Stuart Sr., being a big frog in a little pond meant one had to take very good care of the pond. ''You work in a community, you work for that community,'' he'd often say. For most of those years when George Stuart Inc. was the largest office-supply company in the state, Orlando was indeed a little pond. ''It was a tiny, tiny, market,'' said his son, Charles S. Stuart, former president of the now-bankrupt company. But ask any old-timer to tick off on one hand the names of those who shaped Orlando's entry into the big time, and the name George Stuart will pop up before he reaches the pinky finger.