[speaker002:] do you own a PC
[speaker001:] yeah I do I own a um I own an I an X T clone it's a Samsung and uh with a Hyundai monitor monochrome monitor that I just keep at home for work
[speaker002:] yeah
[speaker001:] and acts as a terminal for me because I'm a graduate student and I log out of school from there
[speaker002:] oh good what are you taking in school
[speaker001:] I'm a graduate student in psychology yeah I do uh language acquisition work
[speaker002:] hum
[speaker001:] but it's it's it's very helpful it's nice to have a machine at home that I can use locally for things like writing and so forth but I don't
[speaker002:] oh it it's uh ideal for that
[speaker001:] yeah and then I don't need printer or anything
[speaker002:] word processing part is is extremely useful I think
[speaker001:] yeah I don't need a printer or anything because I just sort of I can just call school and transfer everything over to school over the phone lines so how about you do you have um a machine
[speaker002:] uh-huh an an P S E and
[speaker001:] okay I know it
[speaker002:] I've been used to working and this my first years but all of the work that I do is plus getting to know it a little bit better they're powerful little rascals
[speaker001:] yeah P S two's are general architecture
[speaker002:] uh
[speaker001:] they're a little bit different though um we have two model seventies that we just bought last year and they um
[speaker002:] yeah
[speaker001:] there are some slight differences between those and other machines I'm finding oh I fell it's fine I actually don't I haven't actually noticed a major difference between a P S two and everything else actually
[speaker002:] uh-huh
[speaker001:] um you know in in in terms of performing faster or better or anything I'm not actually sure what the major advantage of a P S two over anything else is with the possible exception of the fact that it's got a mouse port built in the back
[speaker002:] yeah I'd I've noticed uh there was some scattered at work and I notice the uh through put is much faster on mine than than those but I think it's just because of the the lower level in expectation out of them that the processing speed is much faster on uh the same canned programs
[speaker001:] yeah yeah I think so um it's it's although although it's funny because I just I just had a discussion on break on one of our machines because it's just too slow
[speaker002:] uh-huh
[speaker001:] we have a decent somehow it slipped by us that we had bought one with two meg and of of memory of of RAM and one with only one
[speaker002:] yeah
[speaker001:] and we're running this new version of Lotus I don't know if you've ever seen this or not you know
[speaker002:] or performed to uh eighty percent expectation anyway
[speaker001:] yeah that's true actually I um I found that this particular version three of Lotus one two three actually I think performs maybe even in the high ninety per cent of what I'm expecting at this point I am
[speaker002:] yeah
[speaker001:] it's it's it's because I'm new enough at it yet that I haven't figured everything out
[speaker002:] what was your first exposure to the computer
[speaker001:] my first exposure was I guess when I was an undergraduate um a couple of years ago we had they they inundated us with Macintoshes
[speaker002:] uh-huh
[speaker001:] they brought a bunch of Macs into uh there must have been some sort of program and they brought Macintoshes in for us to for the school to do you know for all the kids in the school to do word processing on and
[speaker002:] right is there an undergraduate requirement on them
[speaker001:] no there there never was an undergraduate requirement it just everyone really everyone took to them very quickly because there were a number of them available and
[speaker002:] what about all the majors are there any such as business or uh or other undergraduate majors do they require it of any of them
[speaker001:] uh I'm not sure they must have they didn't in my case I was a psych major and they didn't I know that here they're required of some of of um where I am now
[speaker002:] yeah
[speaker001:] they require it of of actually a number of different uh majors you know um some psychologists people psychology can take that in lieu of other courses and people in business have to uh I think are supposed and people in cognitive science definitely have to
[speaker002:] well actually it's expanded your field too because the psychology of of man working with machine is is a whole new element that
[speaker001:] oh yeah I I actually um you said you said you work on mainframes a lot that's a lot of what I do is on a a Sun I don't know if you work on Suns at all um
[speaker002:] uh-huh
[speaker001:] so Sun Microsystem machine which is another mainframe in a type of a mainframe we do lots of um sort of brain you know neural network modeling
[speaker002:] uh-huh uh-huh
[speaker001:] on on on a on a lot of mainframe machines so yeah this is been a lot of expanding and having to be able to have things at home and and to study the interaction too has been wonderful
[speaker002:] yeah it's interesting I think uh I've I've worked with computers since nineteen sixty sixty
[speaker001:] wow
[speaker002:] yeah I'm an old man
[speaker001:] well no I mean wow they must have been very different back then
[speaker002:] no they were the IBM six fifty took up a whole room as a vacuum tube uh machine and it was binary quinary um base five
[speaker001:] uh uh wow why base five
[speaker002:] I have no idea I didn't never did learn why but it was a base five which is very interesting
[speaker001:] God so you've really watched the whole the whole field grow up
[speaker002:] oh it's been amazing it really has been
[speaker001:] I mean the the the notion of personal computer back then meant you had to have your own living room
[speaker002:] oh I know it I know it and it's almost like talking about the checkless society and and all of that and you know there was talk in fact my brother uh was with IBM from nineteen fifty four until about three years ago so we really had a family history of talking about development of uh of equipment
[speaker001:] wow so this is the perfect topic for you
[speaker002:] oh you know and I do I do some programming of my own too using Cobol rather than any of the newer languages it's just one that I've known for a long time and still use it even on this
[speaker001:] okay
[speaker002:] PS two so I have to learn a tolerance with canned programs because I'm so used to being able to do exactly what I want to do rather than having to work around or go through two or three different steps to get to the the final one but I am amazed at the power and uh ability of these small units that sit on a table or desk
[speaker001:] well how do they compare with like um you know the the big um the big you know the ones that that took up a whole room in the sixties I mean how would you you know power wise was that less well actually less powerful
[speaker002:] oh it it was almost well it's hard to describe but it's almost like uh an abacus versus an electronic electronic calculator you know you
[speaker001:] oh God really
[speaker002:] you go
[speaker001:] that that much and and and that much bigger too for the same analogy wow
[speaker002:] oh yeah but I mean the speed using punch cards and for your information Ken this first uh first computer had one had two accumulators
[speaker001:] okay
[speaker002:] and one focal point that you had to channel everything into it was called a distributor and you moved it from memory you had to know exactly where in memory it was there was no relative memory
[speaker001:] oh God okay
[speaker002:] and you had to know exactly in memory where it was move it to the distributor put it into one of the accumulators and add it take it back out of the distributor and put it somewhere else so it it was as basic as you can get and uh of course the speed of processing was very very slow but compared to anything then it was very very fast
[speaker001:] right
[speaker002:] so it everything is relative
[speaker001:] that's true
[speaker002:] twenty twenty years from now we'll we'll call up again and say what do you think of the new uh thought computers
[speaker001:] that's true right and they'll and they'll say imagine those big clunkers
[speaker002:] right
[speaker001:] of big laptop computers way back one
[speaker002:] yeah but I think they're they're excellent tools for people to learn how to use and I'd like to see them in grade schools right now I think they are in fact
[speaker001:] does it yeah there's there's
[speaker002:] the computer system uh instruction
[speaker001:] going to say there's a big move for that
[speaker002:] yeah
[speaker001:] my uh my my sister-in-law is a principal of a school
[speaker002:] uh-huh
[speaker001:] and she just switched but before she was in a um a in a in a different school and she wrote a grant with I think it was Apple or IBM one of the two
[speaker002:] uh-huh
[speaker001:] I'm pretty sure it was Apple actually to uh to get a whole bunchy of you know PCs into or PC type machines into the school for the kids to use and and it just according to her it's just a wonderful thing kids go in and are able to work at their own pace and you know computers aren't impatient
[speaker002:] yeah
[speaker001:] they'll sit there and wait forever if the kid doesn't want to answer for awhile or it'll um it'll you know the kids for those kids who really have a problem working with faster than the class or slower than the class it lets them go what she's finding now is that in evenings the parents will come in and do it too
[speaker002:] oh yeah yeah but it has a lot of home uses too I've I've not I don't have mine hooked up to anything uh you know it's just a stand alone but the abilities in the future will be networking throughout uh automatic built-in telephone