When I was invited to this conference, I didn't know what a presentation for this informal evening session should be about. However, I did know that this was a conference of micro-computer people, and that got me thinking about my experience with micro-computers.

The more I thought about it, the more I realized that my dominant memory of using micro-computers (or computers more generally) is of losing files. I don't mean little losses of files, such as when the computer crashes and you haven't done a backup several weeks of work. No — I mean what seems to be a massive systematic tendency for everything I've ever created on a computer to become, sooner or later, inaccessible to me.

To help me think carefully about this systematic "destruction" of everything I've ever done on a computer, I created a chart (see below). I won't go through the whole chart — I'll just summarize the three phases of my computing history that are outlined in the three parts of the chart.

Looking at the first part: For the first 17 or 18 years I was involved in computers, from 1962 to about 1980, I primarily used mainframe and mini-computers. Each company I worked for and each project I was involved with involved a different computer and the move from one computer to the next tended to make my files from the previous computer inaccessible to me because of incompatibilities among storage media, computer formats, archive formats, and so on. All these incompatibilities came substantially from computer vendors making their products deliberately different from each other. (In those days, the software of a particular vendor didn't evolve very fast — assemblers and compilers remained essentially the same for years.)

Looking at the second part of the chart: Sometime in the mid- to late-1970s I read about Visicalc in Ben Rosen's newsletter on electronics, wandered across Cambridge to where Bob Frankston and Dan Bricklin had their little company and got a demo from Bob, and bought a little Apple computer on which to run Visicalc — one of those Apples which had a display that could only show half a page width at a time. This was my first use of a personal computer. I really got going with personal computes in the early 1980s and since then have been primarily a personal computer user. In this personal computer world, I have repeatedly lost access to truly large numbers of file because of changes in application software packages, changes of from PCs to MACs and back, new releases of software packages, incompatibility of storage media, and so forth. Again, much of this incompatibility comes from computer and computer software vendors making their products be deliberately different from each other. However, during the personal computer era we also have the phenomenon wherein software vendors deliberately and frequently obsolete their own software out from under their customers and users, and the vendors are now working hard to make it impossible, in the name of anti-piracy, to maintain any long-term accessible file archives at all.

Looking at the third part of the chart: Today, in April 2002, I need to upgrade my personal computer, and I believe I am faced potentially with the greatest loss of computer files of my 40 year career as a full time computer user. My current PC is a 233 MHz device, running Windows 98 (or is it 97 — I can never remember if it's Office 97 and Windows 98 or the reverse), a 6GB hard drive with three 2 GB partitions, etc. I have been unhappy with my PC system for several years but afraid to upgrade for fear of file loss — potentially massive file loss — and fear of having to spend months doing reinstallation, reconfiguration, and repurchase of software. The more I consider my situation, the more daunted I am.

It was my present frustration and fear, and my 40 years experience with computers that I have just sketched for you, that led me to title this talk, "My life with computers — Will I have anything to show for it?"

I'll stop now and leave you to ponder the possible morals of my story. I'll welcome a later opportunity to discuss the possible morals and any advice anyone has for me for escaping my current and long time situation. My feeling it that these discussions will best be served if significant amounts of wine are available to lubricate the discussion. Thank you, and I'll see you later.