"... and where does it take us?" asked me in the corridor, a colleague, a senior engineer, who had just finished a three-hour presentation to other colleagues in the ICT sector, on the subject of artificial intelligence.
He prepared the presentation for almost three months, read various articles about development of artificial intelligence, looked for examples in practice, solutions and answers to the question: "Where and how next".
It is interesting that that colleague, more than 25 years ago, in a company dealing with distribution, was a pioneer engineer in the development and support of the FMCG industry in our country.
We stood together next to our "ICT museum", a small separate area where we arranged some of the exhibits, now antiques in the ICT industry, and then, top technology.
Technical devices that remind us of some distant time, and accordingly, let me present them in #TBT
(I'm sorry that they haven't been dusted off, apparently hygienists avoid that area for fear of ruining something by cleaning).
My colleague told me the whole history of his work, development and support for handheld computers, which appeared in our country in 1997.
You've probably heard of the term handheld game consoles. For Nintendo, Tetris, Game boy...
At the time when I was a child, these were much smaller consoles, with one single game, the most popular Donkey Kong console or one console with a game in which you need to collect eggs that fall from the sky in a basket by simply moving left and right.
But that was long before these consoles that my colleague told me about.
These consoles were used to type orders in the field, in the stores where the salesman entered.
In the beginning, everyone in the stores, both employees and customers, looked at them in amazement, when he entered the data of the purchase order dictated to him by the store manager on such a device.
Over time, they got used to them, they no longer represented a "threat" with those unknown devices...
It was strange to people and they wondered what it was for and what it did.
It should be kept in mind that in those years mobile phones had not yet appeared in mass use and that only individuals had laptops.
Technology progressed slowly in those years. Proof of that is the following model, which came into use only in 2003, after 6 years.
Such a period of time to change the model, if not the entire technology, is almost unimaginable today.
These days, the replacement of the iPhone 15 with the new iPhone 16 model, the replacement of the Samsung S23 with the new S24, after only one year, is underway.
Replacing classic software with solutions that include AI.
With mobile phones, as well as with computers, everything is speeding up even more, so my colleague's question from the beginning, "Where is this taking us", is probably correct.
As a kid in 1986 I watched the movie with Schwarzenegger "The Terminator". as well as the second part a few years later.
I hope humanity will play the story with AI smarter than in those movies 🙂
Although, judging by the current conflicts in the world, the wars that threaten to escalate, the question is how much humanity is ready for decisions and how smart it is to stop the mistakes we make ourselves, let alone what AI can do to us.
In 1997, people did not have the help of AI. If they wanted to know something, they had to research it themselves, read it, learn it.
In markets, customers gathered around fellow Sellers and asked which device it was and what it was used for.
They needed to know and didn't believe until they found out what it was and how it worked. unlike today's generations.
When they have a question, they ask the AI.
The benefits that AI offers are fantastic, they further speed up some decisions, but the big challenge is that the young generation takes AI for granted. They listen to everything she tells them, without any checking.
I am an older generation, even when the navigation in my car determines the direction, I check which path it is taking me on, and when driving, I must follow the traffic signs.
I know that devices that were used 10 or 15 years ago must be replaced with new ones, but with today's technologies, there is little regret for the past, when everything was much simpler.
We remember those times, and sometimes we take the exhibits from the local museum in our hands, so that they can feel the spirit of the past days...
I already presented some exhibits from this museum in this post, and in addition to old computers, handheld devices, we also have several old phones, of different generations, as well as a pager...
Thank you for stopping by my post and I hope you like the photos and the story I shared with you
All photos are my property, taken with a mobile phone Samsung S23+, which will soon be replaced by a new model 😀
