steveanderson.digital

The Story of the Indiana Jones Bridge Scene

The night before I said to Steven [Spielberg], whatever you do, if you stop cameras don’t shout-out “cut,” just shout-out “stop cameras,” because I might go and cut the bridge.

(via Academy Originals)

(Revised and republished April 12th, 2025)

Excerpts from The Undersea Network, Duke Press, 2015, by Nicole Starosielski.

These excerpts are found in an article on The Undersea Network, at Scientific American:

This vision of autonomous networks is shaped more by Hollywood cinema than by actual cable operations. In reality, our global cable network is always in a sort of crisis and, at the same time, highly dependent on humans to power the steady flow of information transmissions.

It would perhaps be more precise to say that cables are always in a state of “alarm.” An “alarm,” in network-speak, is anything from an indication that the cable has been severed to a reminder about a needed computer update.

Even if our signals continue to pass through cable systems without delay, the undersea network never quite functions perfectly on its own, that is, without alarm and without human assistance.

When I ask operators about the vulnerabilities of today’s undersea network, many express concerns about downsizing and retirements. They fear that carefully sustained industry knowledge will be lost and that there will be nobody to take their place that will adhere to the same standards of reliability. Recruiting the next generation of workers is difficult. There is no direct path to the industry and it remains largely invisible to the public.

(Revised and republished April 12th, 2025)

Australia’s vulnerable submarine cables, by Jessica Woodall at The Australian Strategic Policy Institute

Scattered across the ocean floor in intricate webs, submarine cables transfer high data volumes between onshore nodes. Five main international cables connect Australia to cyberspace and global voice networks. They carry 99% of Australia’s total internet traffic, dwarfing the capacity of satellites. Submarine cables are vital to our communications, economic prosperity, and national security. They also tend to break. A lot.

In most regions of the world this isn’t unexpected, or particularly worrying. Submarine cables aren’t much thicker than a garden hose and for the most part sit untethered and unprotected on the sea floor. Inadvertent breakages from ship anchors, nets and natural phenomena such as undersea earthquakes occur frequently, averaging at least one a week. To mitigate this risk, international agreements between cable operating companies are extensive, repair ships are quickly deployed and traffic is usually rerouted through other cables.

Unfortunately, the situation for Australia is more complicated. Sitting in the Southern Hemisphere, we’re largely isolated from the busy network of Transatlantic and North Asian Cable lines. We’re also unable to use overland fibre optic cables from other countries, leaving us reliant upon just a handful of international undersea cables.

Image below: Australian submarine cables at submarinecablemap.com

(Revised and republished April 12th, 2025)

I came across a blog post (Wayback Machine link) discussing the 50th anniversary of the IBM System/360, and it mentioned a prediction about the so-called “death of the mainframe.”

I had seen the photo before, of Stewart Alsop literally eating his words “Death to the Mainframe” with a knife and fork, but I had not seen the original quote in print, and I couldn’t find a citation.

Back issues of InfoWorld magazine are online at Google Books, but searches there were not helpful. I kept finding references to the prediction, but not the original statement itself.

Then I happened across this forum discussion about the “Death of the Mainframe” on Google Groups, and one of the members noted that the original statement did not happen in the InfoWorld magazine, but at a conference.

The first reference in print to the death of the mainframe by Alsop is in the February 22, 1993 issue of InfoWorld magazine on page 4. The article reads:

Last week, we held the second InfoWorld Editorial EXPOsure, where 35 vendors from the Northwest showed hot new products to 26 of our editors and reporters and more than 70 of our readers (plus an odd assortment of other insiders and cognoscenti).

We also had a fun panel featuring columnists Cheryl Currid and Brian Livingston, along with four of our staff. The panel gave a lively discussion about the role of the mainframe in future information systems. I predicted that the last mainframe will be unplugged on March 15, 1996. Cheryl Currid was a little kinder and predicted that all remaining mainframes will blow up on December 31, 1999, when their clocks cannot figure out how to make the change to the year 2000.

Reference for the magazine article:
Alsop, Stewart. “Microsoft’s Hermes: key network management system or myth?” Distributed Thinking, InfoWorld magazine. February 22, 1993. page 4. (article available on Google Books)

(Revised and republished March 30th, 2025)

Vintage-style map of submarine cables by TeleGeography (Wayback Machine link).

This year’s map pays tribute to the pioneering mapmakers of the Age of Discovery, incorporating elements of medieval and renaissance cartography. In addition to serving as navigational aids, maps from this era were highly sought-after works of art, often adorned with fanciful illustrations of real and imagined dangers at sea. Such embellishments largely disappeared in the early 1600s, pushing modern map design into a purely functional direction.

To bring back the lost aesthetic that vanished along with these whimsical details, TeleGeography referenced a variety of resources in the design process. One of the most invaluable was Chet Van Duzer’s Sea Monsters in Medieval and Renaissance Maps book, which provides arguably the most complete history of the evolution of sea monsters and map design from this period. Our final product is a view of the global submarine cable network seen through the lens of a bygone era.

There's an interactive online version of the map as well:
http://submarine-cable-map-2015.telegeography.com

(via Vox)

(Revised and republished April 12th, 2025)

Half-century milestone for IBM mainframes, by Mark Ward at BBC News, April 7th, 2014.

Most interesting about the passage below, is that they’re referring to mainframes right now, not 50 years ago.

"I don't think people realise how often during the day they interact with a mainframe," he said.

Mr Heptonstall said mainframes were behind many of the big information systems that keep the modern world humming and handled such things as airline reservations, cash machine withdrawals and credit card payments.

The machines were very good at doing small-scale transactions, such as adding or taking figures away from bank balances, over and over again, he said.

"We don't see mainframes as legacy technology," said Charlie Ewen, chief information officer at the Met Office, which has been using mainframes for 40 years.

(Revised and republished March 30th, 2025)

IBM recently celebrated the 50th anniversary of the System/360 mainframe, which was announced on April 7, 1964.

IBM press announcement text for the System/360, 1964 (Wayback Machine link)

IBM System/360 at the Computer History Museum

The System/360, or S/360 is discussed in this IBM video, “IBM Centennial Film: They Were There.”

youtu.be/XrhDaAmn5… (video no longer available)

Also from IBM, System 360: From Computers to Computer Systems (Wayback Machine link):

Most significantly, the S/360 ushered in an era of computer compatibility—for the first time, allowing machines across a product line to work with each other. In fact, it marked a turning point in the emerging field of information science and the understanding of complex systems. After the S/360, we no longer talked about automating particular tasks with “computers.” Now, we talked about managing complex processes through “computer systems.”

(Revised and republished April 1st, 2025)

From Field to Video Room: How Baseball’s Replay Review Will Work, by Richard Sandomir at the New York Times (2014).

Interesting how changing the rules of the game has a big impact on the technology used behind the scenes.

The system is a greatly expanded version of one that has reviewed only home run calls since August 2008. Umpires made their decisions by looking at replays on TV monitors at each stadium.

The new system links camera feeds from the 30 ballparks to the operations center. M.L.B. has also installed its own stationary high home plate cameras at each stadium to offer its video officials the best possible view of base runners who might have to be repositioned depending on their decisions.

The system is starting at a time when there are fewer blustery, base-kicking, dirt-tossing managers around. How would Lou Piniella, Earl Weaver or Ozzie Guillen cope with video review?

“They’d get fired up because they didn’t have this kind of tool,” Marinak said. “Now managers have less incentive to go crazy.”

(Revised and republished April 12th, 2025)

An article from 2010: For Baseball Archivists, a Tag Ends Every Play, by John Branch at the New York Times

“Your archive is only as good as what you know is in it,” said Elizabeth Scott, M.L.B. Productions’ vice president for programming and business affairs.

It is not only the game action that is tagged. If a squirrel runs onto the field, the play will be tagged with “animal.” If there is a shot of a man sipping a beer, there is a “drinking” option under the “fans” category. Those frequent shots of boats bobbing in San Francisco Bay during Giants games are tagged with “boat.” “Pine tar,” “rosin,” “babies,” “bat boys/girls” and “on-deck circle” have their own notations. So do “fist pump,” “curtain call” and “throw equipment.”

(Revised and republished April 12th, 2025)

The Queen of Code at FiveThirtyEight (Wayback Machine link)

(YouTube video no longer available)

Also, an interview with the director of the short film at NPR, on All Tech Considered: Grace Hopper, ‘The Queen Of Code,’ Would Have Hated That Title

The moth, or first computer “bug” mentioned in the video and audio above.

There’s also a Grace Hopper GitHub sticker (shown below) called the “Gracehoptocat.” The sticker was given out at the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing (Wayback Machine link).

(Revised and republished April 1st, 2025)

The Deconstruction of the K-12 Teacher, by Michael Godsy at The Atlantic (2015):

There is a profound difference between a local expert teacher using the Internet and all its resources to supplement and improve his or her lessons, and a teacher facilitating the educational plans of massive organizations.

The article makes some interesting points, and it applies beyond K-12 also. The name of the article in the title bar is "When the Computer Takes Over for the Teacher," which seems a better fit for the story. It's also not just about computers, but a fundamental shift in the way information is created and shared.

(Revised and republished April 12th, 2025)

BBC gives children mini-computers in Make it Digital scheme, by Jane Wakefield at BBC News, 2015:

The initiative is part of a wider push to increase digital skills among young people and help to fill the digital skills gap. The UK is facing a significant skills shortage, with 1.4 million "digital professionals" estimated to be needed over the next five years.

Interesting controversy too:

The BBC Micro, launched in the 1980s, played a big role in making computing mainstream but it was not without controversy. The broadcaster's decision to link up with Acorn Computers angered Sir Clive Sinclair as he prepared to launch a rival machine, the ZX Spectrum.

Below, a 1983 advertisement in Interface Age magazine, "The BBC Microcomputer is here!" (via Wikipedia)

(Revised and republished April 23rd, 2025)

xkcd comic on Douglas Engelbart and the "Mother of All Demos" in 1968

http://xkcd.com/1234/

The video below is the “Mother of All Demos” at the Internet Archive

1968 Demo - FJCC Conference Presentation Reel #1 by SRI International

(Revised and republished April 2nd, 2025)

If only I had this when I was still riding ramps!

www.youtube.com/watch?v=MNL9kuWwFes (video no longer available)

NYTimes on Jim Parsons and Intel advertisements.

How Deep is Your Photography? by Intel (and Jim Parsons)

The three cameras shoot simultaneously, then combine the overlaid information to create an image file that has many more capabilities than a standard JPEG. Once an image is captured, it is processed into a high-quality, depth-mapped file.

“It creates a fat JPEG,” said Erhhung Yuan, system architect and lead developer for Intel RealSense snapshot. “It’s essentially a JPEG with more metadata fields, including the computed depth map.”

The ad is pretty cheesy, but the technology looks interesting. I can see smartphones having more cameras on the backside, and the “fat JPEGS” will require faster processors, more storage, and so on, pushing the limits of the devices even more.

(Revised and republished April 13th, 2025)

“Programmer standing beside punched cards” “This stack of 62,500 punched cards — 5 MB worth — held the control program for the giant SAGE military computer network.” ca. 1955 (via the Computer History Museum)

Explaining data storage in a visual way has always been difficult, but especially so with the transition to magnetic tape in the 1950s and 1960s.

Photographs of punched cards help show the enormity of the task at hand, and also the materiality of the information.

5 megabytes of data seems pretty insignificant nowadays, when terabyte hard drives are a common feature in personal computers.

1 TB = 1,000,000 MB (now that would be a lot of punched cards!)

From the Computer History Museum’s online exhibit on Memory and Storage.

(Revised and republished April 2nd, 2025)

In 2010, representatives from the Computer History Museum visited a company in Texas still using an IBM 402 mainframe for everyday accounting jobs: http://ibm–1401.info/402.html

“Jam needs SOME force”

“Card Jam Front View”

The article below mentions the CHM trip to Texas, and a few other old computers still in use:

If It Ain’t Broke, Don’t Fix It: Ancient Computers in Use Today, by Benj Edwards at PCWorld, 2012 (Internet Archive: Wayback Machine)

The biggest problem with maintaining such ancient computer systems is that the original technicians who knew how to configure and maintain them have long since retired or passed away, so no one is left with the knowledge required to fix them if they break.

(Revised and republished April 2nd, 2025)

I came across this tweet as an advertisement in my own Twitter feed. It’s meant to be ironic, mainframes are still around, it’s more so the way they’re perceived that’s changed.

twitter.com/hpdiscover/status/453556126043615232 (Twitter links no longer available)

The comments are funny too:

@HPDiscover

this is SO not true. Shame on you HP.

#bigdata

— Camila Caldas (@camilaclbcaldas)

April 8, 2014

@HPDiscover

Another one who will eat his words about the death of the Mainframe. Here we go again !!! Have u even watched Matrix ? LOL!! — DD (@Cojinua77)

April 9, 2014

(Revised and republished April 2nd, 2025)

“Comput-Her Baby” - a short film by Dave Goldson and Neal Chastain, 1968

A satire on computer dating and matchmaking. The song “Strangers in the Night” plays while punched cards are sorted by mainframe computers.

The color in the Vimeo embed below (sadly, no longer available) is a bit off, toward a faded, pinkish hue. The video is available at UC Berkely and UC San Diego, but I’m not sure of the condition of those reels. It’s also listed at the UCLA Film and Television archive in faded condition.

(Revised and republished April 2nd, 2025)

Thanks to Andy Baio, all five parts of The Machine That Changed the World are available online: http://waxy.org/2008/06/the_machine_that_changed_the_world/

The Machine That Changed the World is the longest, most comprehensive documentary about the history of computing ever produced, but since its release in 1992, it's become virtually extinct. Out of print and never released online, the only remaining copies are VHS tapes floating around school libraries or in the homes of fans who dubbed the original shows when they aired.

All 5 episodes are (sort of) available on YouTube.

The YouTube videos are blocked now, “on copyright grounds,” but they still play after a moment.

(Revised and republished April 2nd, 2025)

Fragments on Machines, a film by Emma Charles

An interesting and very artistic take on the materiality of digital culture, and the physical structures that support modern communication, computation, and data storage. The ventilation covers and shafts in the beginning of the video seem so mundane, but just a few steps inside is an entire world of noise and movement.

My muscle has been replaced by flex and copper. My brain a server. Ones and zeros my voice. I exist as a phantom, an iridescent color. I speak in shimmering tones to the hidden construction of the form. I desire to become data.

(Revised and republished April 13th, 2025)