Author: Alan Oppenheimer
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Distributing the Future for Half a Century
The tagline for our blog is “Distributing the Future since 1983.” The Future we have helped to distribute would have been quite different had Apple not started on that distribution even before we did. On April 1, 1976. Fifty years ago today. No fooling. Founded as the Apple Computer Company, then Apple Computer, and now…
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So Far: Looking back 50 years ago from 40 years ago
In preparation for the 50th anniversary of Apple’s founding, which will be this Wednesday, April 1, we went into our personal archives to uncover a book Apple wrote 40 years ago to celebrate its 10th anniversary. “So Far: The First Ten Years of a Vision” was given out to Apple employees in 1987 to commemorate…
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Spring Forward
Here in the Northern Hemisphere, today is the first full day of Spring, with the earth’s tilt sideways to the sun, and day and night equal everywhere. Humanity has, for thousands of years, used calendars to keep track of the Past, Present, and Future. The basics of the world’s most popular calendar were laid down…
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Behind the Future: Bell Labs
A recent article in the New York Times, Inside the Birthplace of Your Favorite Technology, provides an overview of some of the major contributions to the Future that AT&T’s Bell Labs research facility has made over the past century. Not given as much credit as Apple, Xerox, and others for its Future contributions, New Jersey…
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Left Behind on Purpose: The Light Bulb?
More surprising than the planned obsolescence of analog TV was the planned obsolescence of the light bulb. The light bulb? Yes, the incandescent light bulb. Invented by Thomas Edison in 1879, light bulb technology remained essentially unchanged for over a century. Fluorescent lighting became popular in businesses, but households continued to use Edison’s technology well…
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Left Behind on Purpose: TV
Many technologies are left behind as an accidental side-effect of the adoption of newer technologies. For instance the decline of the post office. Or “video killed the radio star.“ But some technologies are left behind intentionally, often with a very complex planning cycle to do so. In the 1990s it became clear that there was…
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Left Behind in the Future
At the end of our last post, we asked “What’s next?” as far as potential Future obsoleted technologies. Why not ask one of those potential Future obsoleted technologies that question. “List the items in the graphic” Produce? ChatGPT: “Let me clarify what I meant… Bananas aren’t obsolete. But driving somewhere weekly to buy bananas might…
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The Future Left Behind
The addition of “The end of the Post Office” to our Future Bucket List leads to questions about other technologies that have ended or are ending. We’ve had lots of posts about Future technologies we’ve helped distribute, and about ones we hope to see, but how about technologies we’ve helped to obsolete? We asked one…
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The Super Bowl of Ads
Today here in the U.S. is Super Bowl Sunday. The New England Patriots play the Seattle Seahawks in a repeat of the exciting 2015 contest. The Super Bowl is not just the pinnacle of the N.F.L. season. It’s also the pinnacle of the TV advertising season, “the Super Bowl of ads,” so to speak. 30-second…
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The Future of the Post Office
As the first month of 2026 comes to an end, we’re adding one more entry to our Future Bucket List: the end of the Post Office. Technology giveth and technology taketh away. Cars replaced horses and buggies. Digital music replaced CDs which had replaced records. Email replaced letters. A graph of first-class cards and letters…
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