In 1969 , internet pioneerPaul Baranpredicted that by the class 2000 , computer software engineer may very well be the rich people in the universe . Remember , this is when Bill Gates was just a 14 - year - sometime grind in Seattle .
The ARPANET had not yet soak up its first breathing spell when Baran write his1969 report , “ On The Impact of the New Communications Media Upon Social Values . ” But his visual sensation for what new communication theory technology would enable ( and sometimesharm ) in the last three X of the 20th one C , was disturbingly prescient .
His prediction about the figurer programmer of the year 2000 makes one wonder if Baran was a clock time traveler perhaps monish us about the point - com house of cards :
As communication development evolves , more decision functions will be placed upon computers bond together as a vernacular communication web . Financial success may in the future come to count more upon the brilliance and imagination of the human who programs the computing machine than upon any other single factor . The key man in the raw office elite will be the one who can best programme a computing machine , that is , the person who make the good enjoyment of the uncommitted information and the computer ’s attainment in formulate a problem . In a world where knowledge is power , and where communications think of access to king , he who can most effectively utilize this access will be in the driver ’s keister . Some persons ( principally computer computer programmer ) claim that the richest military man in the world in the year 2000 will be a calculator programmer . This may go outlandish , but few really good programmers laugh when they consider this averment .
Baran ’s admission that such a prediction “ may sound outlandish ” really puts in view just how far - out this vision of the time to come would have read to people of the sixties . Computer programmers ? fat ? Were n’t those just the monocled nerds grind away in black rooms on college campuses ?
Today , technical literacy in computers is fiercely promoted with the same conviction as Americans in the late fifties who worried that those lazy infant boomer were falling behind in skill and technology .
While some of the best pay jobs for Americans with a bachelor ’s degreeinclude computer software developers , Baran ’s predictions can be read munificently ( as it seems they were think ) to include any number of professions today . Now that so many of us sit in front of computers all daylight , his assertion that “ the someone who makes the good use of the useable info and the computing gadget ’s skills in develop a trouble ” will reap monetary reward middling much describes any white-hot shoe collar actor of the twenty-first century .
I venture we ’re all programmers now , whether we like it or not . If only we had the banking company account to go with it .
1969 exposure of UCLA from theKleinrock Internet History Center at UCLA
arpanetComputersInternetpaleofuture
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