Reflections on 40 years in tech

The farther back you can look, the farther forward you are likely to see.” Winston Churchill

The Web is 30 years old this week. And today is my birthday.

40 years ago, I was told, NO! You can’t do arts AND science. It’s just not done. Besides, the timetables clash.

But I insisted and after a while I was told, “Wait, there’s this weird new course about computers. You could do that…”

… and so, I became one of the first in the UK to do computer science at school age. Which was great by me because being let out two afternoons a week to attend college meant I didn’t have to wear uniform.

I wrote my first line of code that September, 40 years ago!

Thanks to those early days of being taught super-powers by James T Kirk, I haven’t looked back since.

Until today.

So I’ve decided to share some reflections on life in tech over 40 years.

Originally this was to be a brief roundup of my thoughts on tech over the four decades I’ve been immersed in it. But, having spent two weeks drafting and researching I soon realised this is way too much for a single blog post.

It’s also become clear that my motivation and hope is to provide some perspective for tech pros, demystification for everyone else … and catharsis for me.

I’ll be publishing my thoughts as a series of posts over the next 12 months. I have a list of things I want to cover but quite frankly I have no idea where or how this is going to go. I can tell you however that these posts will be less about the technology itself, and more on how tech is changing the world for us all.

So please bear with me and enjoy the ride.

Here’s the first post: The Art of Programming

PS I’ll still be writing on my other usual topics like growth, marketing and leadership in between.

PPS Drop your email below if you want to get these blog posts as soon as I publish them.

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Note: Over the years ‘information technology’ (or IT) seems to have morphed into ‘tech’. Of course there are many other forms of technology but when I say ‘tech’ I mean information technology in general and software in particular.

Photo by Martin Reisch