Most people who are on the inside of a technology have no idea what it's like to look at from an end user's point of view. This is why they have focus groups. I'm really familiar with this because I worked 10 years for Hallmark Cards in the U.S.
Pat Cadigan
I'm old enough to remember when the polio vaccine was still new. Also, it hadn't been that long since most people who caught pneumonia died from it. These medical breakthroughs were practically miracles.
Cyberpunk was really a reaction against old boy sci-fi which was about white guys in space who would come up with some kind of technological thing.
In my last year at Hallmark, we finally began putting verses on computer. It had been all in filing cabinets on index cards. They had to assign a 4 digit serial number to each sentiment, for each area of feeling.
I took this 'how to build computers' course basically because I'm sick and tired of getting ripped off by cheesy computer companies. Software baffles me. I like hardware. I used to change my own oil, and now I want to build my own computer so I can have what I want.
What I have found most surprising is the amount of damage we have done to environment in the course of my lifetime - not even five and a half decades.
I used to think that, by the 21st century, cars would run on electricity rather than gasoline and would have guidance systems so that they actually drove themselves. Specially equipped roadways would transmit instructions to the cars, telling them where to go and how fast. I figured this would be in the lines painted on the roads.
Perhaps this is because I'm from the generation that grew up watching 'The Jetsons' on TV, but I really thought we would be much more advanced in the areas of transportation and medicine.
My best friend Rosemarie and I had a very involved secret life when we were in elementary school. After we saw 'The Day the Earth Stood Still' on TV, we invented a whole secret life in which we were twins from the planet Venus, and we were in charge of the entire solar system as well as Earth.
