User:Allynnc

Insert non-formatted text hereThis is my user page.

I have 40 years experience around computers and databases.

I was a major player in the development of a number of technologies that everyone takes for granted today. Some are not public. The most public are GPS, the internet, and desktop computing. I have yet to invent a technology. My job is to implement technology.

GPS. In 1980 I wrote a white paper to justify spending millions putting up a constellation of satellites to provide Navy ship tracking capability. My white paper commercialized it by listing all of the 2006 technologies that would come about and the billions of industry it would support. I have still been able to control it somewhat, but I am now concerned with Europe starting to build their own that I cannot control. Technology out of control is dangerous to the world.

Internet. In 1968 I wrote the requirement for an Army and an Air Force computer to talk seamlessly as if they were one big computer…ARPANET grew out of that, but there is more. My requirement was filled in 1969.

Desktop computing. In 1979 I went to my boss and offered to drag the US Air Force into the computer age. I was allowed to handpick 12 of the top people in the field to include hardware, software, and budget gurus. I had a nationwide linkup of dumb terminals linking through a mainframe and passing crude emails across the country. In 1981 my office received its first mini-computer, the first in the command outside of a computer center. With telephone lines limited to 300 BAUD, I found a hobbyist computer could create files and upload or download quicker than I could type on line. Many of my users started buying some of the 20 or so incompatible brands and then calling me to find out how to boot up. I was looking at expanding to hundreds of users. I needed a standard government desktop computer to replace the dumb terminals and all the personally owned off-brands. IBM was so bad back then that they gave up and put their technology out for anyone to build to. That allowed me to choose an IBM compatible instead of justifying a Commodore, which I considered the best on the market, or an Apple IIe, which I considered second best. I figured buying 100,000 desktop computers on the initial contract and potentially millions of IBM compatibles would create a vacuum for software and hardware development and I was right. Almost all the proprietary hardware companies are gone.

I am still working communications and computers R&D. I have retired twice and back for a third time.

My motto, “If you have not spent years in other countries, if you have not been shot at, if you haven’t personally told the leaders of your country, “No”, if you are under 40, if you haven’t lived in at least 5 cities more than 500 miles apart, if you haven’t been responsible for at least $1B budget, then don’t question me. Been there and done that.”