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Introduction with Nicholas Johnson

Nicholas Johnson: Hi, I’m Nicholas Johnson. When I was a Federal Communications commissioner, television meant the three networks. Telephones were to talk into not about. And computers. Well, they were for specialists and large corporations. Then came the electronics revolution, with its video recorders and wireless telephones, personal computers, a whole new bewildering world of entertainment information services. That’s what the New Tech Times is all about to help people like you and me think it through before we either buy in or reject it all.

And of all the equipment and purchases made possible by this revolution, the most significant and the most anxiety provoking is the home computer. Today, there are bestselling books aimed at reducing that anxiety. One of the most popular is The Personal Computer Book.

Here’s its author, Peter McWilliams.

Buying Your First Computer

Peter McWilliams: How do you buy your first computer? Well, you buy your first computer very carefully, unless you have lots of money, in which case it doesn’t really matter. But for most people, you have to do a lot of shopping. You’ve got to shop around. You’ve got to visit computer stores. Do your homework. Read about computers. Read articles about computers. Read books about computers. When you feel comfortable enough, then take the plunge.

And a lot of people, by the way, should not get personal computers. If you want to balance your checkbook, there’s no reason on Earth to buy a computer any more expensive than $5, which is a $5 pocket calculator. You can balance your checkbook much better and faster and easier with a $5 calculator than you can with a $5,000 personal computer.

If all you want to do is learn a little bit about computers, you should probably go out and buy something like a Commodore VIC-20. If all you want to do is play games on your computer, you should go out and get a ColecoVision, and then you can add to the ColecoVision a little bit more and build it up into a computer for your home.

If what you want to do is word processing as economically as possible, you should probably look into a Kaypro if you want to do two tasks. For example, if you wanted to play games and do word processing, definitely buy two computers because the best game playing computers are available now for about $200. The best word processing computers cost a lot more, and they don’t play games very well.

And the ones that play games don’t process words all that well. And you can save a lot of money by buying two separate computers and then by buying one computer. And yes, you will buy many computers in your lifetime. You will not buy this one computer and that will last you your whole life. Sorry. You will probably go through several computers, just as you’ve probably gone through several cars, just as you’ve probably gone through a few TV sets.

If you’ve been around for a period of time and that’s just going to happen. So don’t think, well, this will this do me into my old age and retirement. Don’t worry about it. You know, buy whatever you think we’ll do best for right now and, and then plan to buy another one in a few years.

Nicholas Johnson: Whether to buy a computer, which computer to buy. Those are major decisions. Peter McWilliams book can help, and there are other recommended readings will pass along later in the program. But I’ve been through this process. And let me tell you, once you bring home one of these things for the kids, you have a major family project on your end.

As this family found out.

Family Computer Experience

Tricia: Oh, I only did them once or twice a year. And. I only did that not once, this time with them and talking it over. It seemed to us that it would be able to do a lot of things for our kids in terms of just helping them learn in ways that otherwise they might not have have been able to learn. So, Brandon, what did you do today?

Narrator: Dennis and Tricia D. and their sons had to make a tough decision. A computer or a family vacation.

Tricia: We’d already started talking about the fact that we’d been saving our money to go to the Grand Canyon. And I remember the night that we sat down and we said, well, you know, why don’t we, look at it this way. We can either go to the Grand Canyon or buy a computer. And Brandon thought it was a wonderful idea to buy the computer. Casey, that when we first started talking about it, wasn’t so sure that the Grand Canyon wouldn’t have been a whole lot better than the computer.

Dennis: I went out and purchased it myself, and I brought it home, got it all hooked up, turned it on, and it didn’t work. And I have a friend who’s into computers, and I called him up, and that’s strange. I mean, it’s completely new to me. It should work. And I took it back and sure enough, there was something wrong with the computer. So my initial reaction was absolute frustration, because I had to wait about 24 hours before I could take it back, and I was ready to throw the damn thing away.

Narrator: When they finally got their computer plugged in and working. The next step was to buy software programs for their computer.

Tricia: It’s been very frustrating. The last time that we were in looking for something to buy, I had asked the salesman if there was any good educational programing that he could recommend, and he showed me a few rather dull kinds of things. And then he said, but if you really want to see the best educational software in the shop, come over here. I’ll show it to you. So I thought, oh, this is great. And I walked over and he put this disc in and he said, here it is. And it was a game. It was some little ladders and monsters chasing you or something. He said, now this is the way to use a computer. And I thought, that’s terrible.

Dennis: Most of the creativity is going into the games. Obviously. And so you end up with a product that is bad for two reasons. One, it’s not very, interesting. And therefore the kids aren’t interested in sitting down and running it. And secondly, it’s really not tailored for the needs of your children.

Tricia: Some people have the feeling that you just go and you buy this thing and you bring it home and you turn it on and it does wonderful, dazzling things. I think it was deleted. You know what? It was deleted. Yeah. Entirely deleted if you couldn’t get into this one. Okay.

Narrator: Well, months later, the computer still isn’t dazzling the family, but it has become a new way to assist and old activity storytelling at this point.

Tricia: Oh, yeah? You want Ono or you? You want to keep suddenly. Oh, no. Than a than a. Okay, I see what you want to say. Oh, no. And then whatever. Nothing has happened. Okay. Brandon is a real creative kid. He loves to make up stories, and he loves to to write. And he loves to, figure out how to how to make his characters interact and do things and, the computer is a wonderful way for him to do that, because it’s like just letting his mind go free.

And I can go back and, correct my mistakes more without having to worry about having an eraser. And I don’t have to sharpen the pencil. And, you can jump around in the program by just pressing the button, and your work comes out really nicely and neat. You only need to do one draft for Casey. I think what is happening is he’s finding out that he can work with ideas.

The computer, I really believe, is getting that point across to Casey, kind of what you can do. You know, you’ll be able to do it. He has this this vocabulary spelling program that he works on every week. And it’s it’s a very simple program. It involves defining words and spelling them and then using them in context plays in.

Casey: The spelling program. It’s such a neat thing. It, like a game, anyway. Makes it fun.

Tricia: Do you find.

Casey: The other good thing about the computer is it’s not like the teachers I’m stuck with. You know, if you keep making a mistake, the teachers, you know, just say no triangles with the computer. Just be calm, you know.

Tricia: Like that. We were looking this old looking it over the other night, and he said, you know, it’s just amazing. When I think all of that came from me. All of that came from me.

I think that the computer can enhance family interaction if the family uses it that way. And that’s the important thing. And I even now, I think, how terrible to be comparing the Grand Canyon to a computer. But the Grand Canyon will always be there. I hope. And computers will always be there too. But what we’re getting out of it right now is really important. So I’m glad we did it.

Exercise Video Cassettes Review

Narrator: Still to come exercising back is sad. And a commentary from Edwin Newman. Here again is Nicholas Johnson.

Nicholas Johnson: Well, computers are only part of this electronics revolution. TV is changing too, and nothing is changing it more radically than these videocassette recorders. They let you record programs or make your own. And now prerecorded tapes have become a big business. Some of the most popular are not just movies, but they show you things like how to exercise.

And here to talk about the pros and cons of exercise cassettes is Judy Alter, author of Surviving Exercise. Hi, Judy. Welcome to the New Tech Times.

Judy Alter: Hi, Nick. Thanks.

Nicholas Johnson: You know, I think I’d rather go jogging or have a swim than stay home and watch a videocassette of exercise. Isn’t this maybe an example of one more television intrusion into our lives?

Judy Alter: It could be, but I think the purpose of having those tapes around is to review after a class.

Nicholas Johnson: Well, then the question is whether they really serve those that purpose very well. And I have some tapes here I’d like you to take a look at. And maybe you give us an evaluation of them.

Judy Alter: Good.

Exercise Instructor: I’m zapping right, left right left right. Five. Six seven forward and 1234. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six. Seven. Eight. To the right. Pull it out. Two. Three and up. And again, side by side. For. Am. Oh. Now, starting with the half. You take it right. And left and right and left and right and left. Fantastic. Keep it moving. Moving? Yes.

Nicholas Johnson: All right, there are the tapes. Now, aside from the money they cost. What? What kind of harms? Really done with something like that?

Judy Alter: Those tapes have in them the same problems that most of the exercise systems in books and in classes around the country.

Nicholas Johnson: So you’re really indicting the whole exercise?

Judy Alter: Yeah. That’s what my books about.

Nicholas Johnson: Okay. Well, now. But why? What are they doing wrong?

Judy Alter: Most of the things they’re bouncing instead of holding a stretch.

Nicholas Johnson: Well, now, what’s wrong with that?

Judy Alter: Bouncing tear is cross fibers and doesn’t stretch because half of a bounce is a contraction and that cancels out the stretch.

Nicholas Johnson: So you should just go and just stretch and hold.

Judy Alter: And hold, at least for a minute.

Nicholas Johnson: Yeah. Somebody told me that once I try to remember, that’s important. Okay. What else.

Judy Alter: They’re saying? You’re to strengthen your body. They’re doing fast sit ups and fast. Other kinds of supposedly strengthening where that uses momentum. For the most part, you’re throwing the body parts around and that’s not strengthening. So which is grabbing?

Nicholas Johnson: What should you do.

Judy Alter: When you do anything for strength to you go down and up against gravity slowly till it’s tired. I’m so pleased to hear that. More slowly. Right. Okay. They’re also telling you that you’re going to get slim and a smaller waistline by stretching it, because this side stretch is actually widening.

Nicholas Johnson: I know it never works for me, but but I was told it was supposed to help.

Judy Alter: It’s wrong. It doesn’t help.

Nicholas Johnson: Why not?

Judy Alter: Because there there are three stomach muscles, two of which cross the waist on a bias. And when you stretch your bias, you’re just widening it. Those muscles should be strengthened. That means contracted by going down and up against gravity slowly.

Nicholas Johnson: So you’re wasting your time. Is university professor researching writing about this stuff? You really do have something to say about it? Well, I appreciate that, but is there anything that we can say good about this? You know, there’s some people who who say we shouldn’t exercise at all. George Bernard Shaw always said he would. He would sit rather than stand, lie down rather than sit. Every chance he got. Is exercise hazardous to our health, or is there some good in in this?

Judy Alter: There’s it’s really important people should go and exercise because we now know it keeps you fit. It relaxes tension. They’re burning calories. If the people actually get up in their living rooms and do those, you know, exercise with the tapes and the fact that they want to exercise is very good. Their motivation is right. But I don’t think they should be doing it that way. Okay.

Nicholas Johnson: Now how much of this problem, Judy, do you think comes from the fact that this is, after all, television? It’s a videocassette, and they’re trying to sell people something they’re used to seeing on their screen.

Judy Alter: There’s a whole lot of television in these tapes because they’re fast moving and they have very beautiful, slim, very perfect people right behind the exercise leader doing everything correctly. And in reality, not everybody’s perfect, and you have no interchange from the tape, from the teacher to you telling you fix your knee, don’t lock, don’t hurt. If it stops, don’t do it. So that television is blocking what we really want them to be doing and that is being fit.

Nicholas Johnson: Thank you, Judy. Of course, exercise cassettes are just one of many kinds of programs or software you can buy. We’ll be reviewing everything from video games to video discs on the New Tech Times, and we like your suggestions for consumer reviews, so let me know what you’d like to see on the New Tech Times. Send your ideas to 821 University Avenue, Madison, Wisconsin, 53706.

Dragon’s Lair: Hollywood Meets Arcade

Nicholas Johnson: Whether it’s video, exercise or video games, the producers of high tech consumer goods are in stiff competition for our money. Video games began in public arcades, but now the video arcade business is feeling the pinch, as electronic breakthroughs make home games more like the arcade versions. I mean, why spend quarter after quarter on Pac-Man when you can buy a Pac-Man cartridge? You’ve played at home as often as you want. So to bring the players back to the arcades, the game designers are working with Hollywood movie makers to create a new generation of video games. We have this report, this Dragon’s Lair.

Narrator: A fantasy adventure where you become a valiant knight on a quest to rescue the princess from the clutches of an evil dragon. How do you control the actions of a daring adventurer? Finding his way through the castle of a dark wizard who has interacted with treacherous monsters and obstacles? “Dragon’s Lair” is not a feature length movie. It’s not even a Saturday morning cartoon. “Dragon’s Lair” is a brand new first-in-the-block animated video game that you can play in an arcade.

Don Bluth: It’s been called by some people the jazz singer of the arcade business, which is the jazz. It was the first talkie, you know, and that’s what it is. It’s opened up the vision, and I believe what it probably has done is antiquated. All the other arcade games, and there’ll be a whole barrage now of games which will start using photographic visuals and not computer generated visuals.

Narrator: But we’re getting ahead of the story. It all started with a simple game like pong that you could play on your home TV set. One of the first video games, but not very exciting. Then along came the video arcade. With flashy games that you couldn’t get at home, and the race for the quarter was on. And the quarters came into the arcade to the tune of $9 billion a year. But the home video game makers wanted a bigger cut of the action, so they produced more complex games. And the fight for the quarter heated up as new home video game cartridges filed into battle.

Arcade Owner: It’s hurt. There’s no question about the first-generation home games. Really, line drawings somewhere. But now they’re getting so involved there, they’re actually just as sophisticated as some of these games. You can play “Centipede” and “Pac-Man” on your home Atari systems — you know, the computer games — and it’s taking a lot away.

Narrator: So new games were brought in to entice video players back to the arcade. Even games based on box office smashes were brought into the battle.

Arcade Owner: They’re looking for something new and different. And they’re coming here with a dollar. Maybe they’ll spend one or two quarters on video games, maybe a quarter for a soda and a quarter for that different type of amusement. They want variety. They can’t just play the same stuff over and over. It’s just too much. It’s just too boring.

Narrator: And then along came a new piece of technology called the LaserDisc. And a man named Don Bluth, who liked to tell stories with classical animation. Why have you come?

Don Bluth: Animation is that beautiful thing that if it’s done properly, can you tell stories like no other art form can?

Dragon’s Lair Character: My son’s life is in great danger.

Don Bluth: We were approached by a company called Advanced Micro Computers, and these people were engineers, and they were trying to conceptualize a game about some kind of sword and sorcery. And they had just gotten very excited about the LaserDisc. And they came to us and said, would you like to animate an arcade game on the LaserDisc?

Narrator: The LaserDisc uses a light beam to produce pictures on a TV screen in any order you desire at the touch of a button.

Narrator: Full color motion pictures and random access of those pictures. When you put that together, you might just have a breakthrough for video arcade games. And that breakthrough is “Dragon’s Lair.”

Don Bluth: When you’re looking at the little knight in “Dragon’s Lair,” he gets into trouble. He may be walking up a drawbridge. The drawbridge is rotten and so he caves in. At that moment, he’s in trouble. That’s the little moment in time when the game player should say, oh, I need to get him out of trouble. At that point, if he pushes the sword button, the laser light will access to another scene showing Dirk pull his sword and slay the monster and get out of the bridge and go on in the castle.

Dragon’s Lair Character: He stayed in the city.

Don Bluth: So I’ve set up a scene which shows a threat, and a scene which shows the threat resolve itself and you save himself. Now, if I set up those threats and resolves every second, then I’ve got a very fast game which could appeal to those teenagers in the arcade.

Like I said, I think it has the most advanced graphics I’ve seen in any time game I played before, and that is something is really, really addictive. In playing the arcade games, I found that there are a lot of little sticks and dots and you know, the graphics are not nothing to write mom about, but I thought if we can do a full blown classical animation and we can put a soundtrack with it, so there’s sound effects and there is a storyline, the character is not just trying to shoot things down and destroy things, but he’s on a rescue mission and he’s trying to save something.

We have music. We have, of course, all the bright colors that you see in animation. Then that’s bringing the artistry of Hollywood to the engineer that their programs and the two are marrying. That’s art and science. Getting involved together. And that’s a very unusual idea.

An arcade owner will pay maybe $3,900 or $4,000 for an arcade game. What we’ve done with “Dragon’s Lair” is design a game so that when it does deteriorate and it isn’t quite as popular, he can just simply take off the LaserDisc and put a new LaserDisc on it. That’s a new game. Change the marquee on the front of the player and put in a new EEPROM that holds the program, and he’s ready to go again. And all of that will retail to him for under $1,000.

Narrator: And when you get tired of “Dragon’s Lair,” Don Bluth will be ready with a new animated LaserDisc game, “Space Ace.” And soon other companies will release their own laser arcade games. Hollywood animation and the LaserDisc have become the video arcades’ latest reinforcements in the billion-dollar battle for the game player’s quarter.

Edwin Newman on Computer Language

Nicholas Johnson: Of course, not everyone is so enthusiastic about video games. In fact, some doubt we need any of this new technology. Yet it’s entered every aspect of our lives. Our defense budget, our work, our homes, our leisure. It’s created new words, new meanings for old words here with a few more words about words. As guest commentator Edwin Newman, computers will unavoidably bring us new terms.

Edwin Newman: Some of them are already well known. Take courseware, a fancy way of saying courses or classes, and byte with a Y, which is the unit of information storage on a computer, and RAM, which is an acronym for Random Access Memory, and CAD, another acronym for computer-aided design. The day will come when nobody will remember what a RAM on a CAM used to be.

Now this kind of thing can’t be stopped. Anything new and important has some effect on the language and we should welcome that. It makes American English more interesting. It renews the language. But two things worry me. One is that computer language tends to be impersonal, heavy. Think of longitudinal redundancy check characters, concatenated data sets, binary incremental representations, non-polarized return-to-zero recordings.

When the names of people who have died are removed from the Social Security and Medicare computers. This is known as death termination interface, which is just what I mean. Why don’t they call it taking the names off? So I’m troubled by computer language itself. And the second thing that worries me is the tendency of such language to spread.

It’s attractive to people because it’s the latest thing. They want to be in the vanguard, in the know. Think of input. You can’t get away from it. Software. Have some other. And we’re only at the beginning of this. The spread of computer language beyond its own borders should not be accepted uncritically. Some of it ought to be resisted.

Now, let me give you an example. In some computer establishments, there’s something called the input output user access facility. In the days before computers, such places were known as work windows. Three syllables instead of 12. And a lot more matter of fact than at the same time, more graphic. Work windows should be preserved. The language needs them. In that, Newman is right.

Closing

Nicholas Johnson: Of course, every new development, every new age seems to bring with it a new vocabulary, sometimes unnecessarily so. Sure, true of our times, these New Tech Times. Will this new tech fill our minds or just empty our pockets? Well, it’s tough coping with all these new choices, and we hope this program will make the decisions a little easier for you and for me, and that you’ll be back here with me next week when we take a further look at these New Tech Times.

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