Remember?

Being 30 years old I often wonder how it was like to do business when I was born, before Bill, Steve, CERN, ARPA and all those guys brought us PCs, Windows and the internet... How was doing business in the 50ies, 60ies, 70ies or 80ies e.g... ? 80ies? That is not so long ago - is it? How did people communicate without email? How could they join telephone conferences without mobile phones when they were traveling? Have you every leaned back and thought about it? How did they send messages, process orders, earn money? I grew up with all this high-tech stuff, it is part of my life, I love it, but how are older people managing it - how did they manage back then?.... so I ask "older business people" on a family birthday celebration the other day. Amazing! I listened stearing, unbelieving... Boy, how slow they were... and lotsa paper...Orders were written on papers by secretaries, handed around, put on Telex-Machines if available (Faximiles weren´t even there or at least only the Japanes believed in them back then...) and it took weeks until an order had been processed, e.g. goods delivered... Research was done via telephone not the internet...stacks of paper piled up... had to be worked on sequentially... stored away in big folders and storage shelves... Looking for an old order? Have fun searching for it in the office archive room with hundreds of folders... no desktop search...no computers... Can you imagine? I almost can´t. So the paper is gone - at least I hardly see any - maybe only for contracts. Secretaries are gone - at least I don´t have one. Ok - I use fax sometimes, but it feels weird. What do I learn from it? First of all "Back to the Future I, II, III" are awesome movies. Second: my kids will laugh at me... Third: There is so much ahead of us... God - I wish I could travel in time and have a sneak preview at 2036 ... and find a sports magazine in a trashcan with all the Baseball, BBall and soccer scores from 2007-2010 ;-)