Our computer lives

 There’s an old joke that goes like this: A bunch of scientists created a huge machine capable of complex calculations and called it UNIVAC. Eager to test their invention, they asked it, “Is there a God?”The vacuum tubes hummed and the tape spools spun for several minutes. Finally, the machine spit out a little card, on which was written, “THERE IS NOW.” On March 31 in 1951, the Remington Rand Corporation signed a contract to deliver the first UNIVAC computer to the U.S. Census Bureau. UNIVAC I (which stands for Universal Automatic Computer) took up 350 square feet of floor space — about the size of a one-car garage — and was the first American commercial computer. It was designed for the rapid and relatively simple arithmetic calculation of numbers needed by businesses, rather than the complex calculations required of the sciences. It was intended to compete against IBM’s punch card-reading computers, but UNIVAC read magnetic tapes, not punch cards, so a special “card to tape converter” had to be designed.

Though the government contract was signed, and a ceremony held, on March 31, the computer wasn’t actually delivered until the following December; this was because there was only one UNIVAC I, and Remington Rand wanted to use it for demonstration purposes. So they asked for and received time to build a second computer.

The government was the first big customer of the UNIVACs, with subsequent models going to the Air Force, the Army Map Service, the Atomic Energy Commission, and the Navy. The first commercial sale was to General Electric, for their Appliance Division, followed soon after by the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company, in 1954. There were 46 UNIVAC I’s built and delivered, in all.

The computer first came to the notice of the general public in 1952, when CBS used one to predict the outcome of the presidential election. UNIVAC correctly picked Eisenhower and predicted his electoral count within 1 percent, but the network didn’t release the results until after the election was called, so as not to affect the outcome. 

Thanks Writer's Almanac

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My ex-husband was one of the first insurance employees writing code for computers, at Traveler's Insurance in 1964. He was first a Computer Programmer then called a System's Analyst most of his career. That was just 14 years after that first big ole computer was developed and went into use. 

Time has certainly squeezed along at a faster pace since then. I borrowed a word processor from him in the 1980s when I was in grad school. He had some of the first Apple computers in his home, and as he upgraded, sometimes I could receive the older models. Thus I had an Apple IIe for a while, but never had some of the other models, which went to our sons.

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Today I put energy into writing blogs (and replying to comments) when I have all this precious time as a retiree. And I give myself a daily mantra, "I use the screens, they don't own me."

 So many of us (me included) spend each moment gazing at our phones, games, TV's and computers. But they are just tools. I am so grateful to have all of these, but also need to remind myself of the wonders of nature! Yes, even if I don't go barefoot these days, yesterday I walked across a large grassy area, and was so happy to feel the earth as it had different softness and angles with each footstep.

Black Mountain Golf course Nov. 10, 2013. My photo.

Life is all meditation

 First, state of mind this morning is contemplative. 

So the body follows. Or perhaps as its housing, it provides the ground upon which the meditation might arise.

Each step as I go to the kitchen to prepare the espresso and Americano which follows. The heel hits the floor, then foot rolls forward onto ball of the foot, finally bending the toes as it lifts to move my weight forward. Turning is no longer on my toes as it once was. Now I purposefully turn heelward, keeping my balance more easily. Fall prevention that wasn’t taught, but arrived organically, much as this wonderful opportunity to be aware.

The sip of coffee surprises me just now, a different taste from the first cup which was flavored artificially with French vanilla creamer. Now it’s just got honey to sweeten the caffeine. I like how honey remains in my mouth after I swallow…a taste that makes me salivate.

Do you ever have moments like these, of tiny awarenesses of life? For me to stop and know like this is rare, and to capture these feelings, observations, even rarer still.

The room is mostly dark. The photo makes it look like daylight, but it’s actually pre-dawn. There is a new device on the floor by my bed, the blue buddy of an oxygen generating machine. It gave me my first night on O2 which was pretty good. I didn’t feel all that different when I woke, except a bit light headed…my feet felt further from my head kind of. But I move slowly so knew I was ok.

Feeling much appreciation for bloggers today. I’ve read a few of my familiar friend’s statements from last night and early morning. There are all these interesting people, mostly without names or faces, who share their lives with strangers. And those then comment about their doings. That’s it for most of them. I and just a few will read those comments and make a reply to them…thus a very short conversation.

But these conversations, 2 statements on some subject or another, then provide interest beyond the original paragraphs…which next readers can then also comment upon. And this has created a new conversation. A small community of friendly people.

I do love this new creation which happens independently, with input from such diverse people. From all over the US, England, Germany, Scotland, Sweden, Canada (oh yes, several folks there!) and sometimes further away. I may read others, and sometimes comment, but there are few that have the time or inclination to push for the conversations. That’s ok. It’s still social media. And somehow nobody slams other’s ideas!

Of course this community of blog-friends all seem liberal minded and of similar political persuasions, and maybe even mostly of similar spiritual beliefs (or at least tolerant of others!) No MAGA are welcome here. And we support each other in confirming our strengths and frailties. After all that’s what friendship is all about.

It’s a neighborhood on the internet.

On the concept of peace

Dougald Hine starts (and doesn't finish) talking about:

  a talk that Ivan Illich gave at the start of the 1980s in Japan about the culturally specific flavours of “peace” and how historians have preferred to dwell on the violence of the past than on its forms of peace. He brings in a distinction from Ishida Takeshi between the peace of the centre (“peace-keeping”, “peace-making”) and the peace of the margin, where people’s hope is to be “left in peace”. And he offers this thought about what we are usually talking about nowadays when we use the language of peace:

Paradoxically, peace was turned into an academic subject just when it had been reduced to a balance between sovereign, economic powers acting under the assumption of scarcity. Thus study is restricted to research on the least violent truce between competitors locked into a zero sum game. Like searchlights, the concepts of this research focus on scarcities. And they permit the discovery of unequal distributions of scarcity. But in the process of such research, the peaceful enjoyment of that which is not scarce, people’s peace, is left in a zone of deep shadow.

It is hard to bring into view what Illich is trying to speak of when he says that the past includes “the peaceful enjoyment of that which is not scarce”. We’re so saturated in a story of original scarcity, there’s something here that doesn’t compute.

Then Hine quotes an hour discussion with a student of Illich's which is difficult for me to understand...but I will try again later.

I like being pushed to understand more about peace.

Inner peace has been so much the focus in my life, due to the incredible disruptions in our world these days. It's a survival technique I'm sure.

Just wanted to share this, as these are thoughts of a stream of ongoing considerations.