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 ![[----------------Horizontal Rule----------------]](/webart/hrule.gif){kind=small}  1.Message from the AuthorI recently celebrated a birthday. No, this isn’t going to be one of those sappy meditations on how Mr. Old Age is ruining my life by tinkling his icy fingers up and down my back; rather, I want to reflect upon the technological change I’ve seen in my life. It has been great and swift. I was born in a world where radio was the principal means of entertainment and information. Our knowledge of World War II came from newspapers, magazines, fuzzy-voiced reporters on the radio and friends and neighbors writing home from the front. These sources were augmented by black and white newsreel clips shown in movie theaters. How powerful these images were! They became the collective experience of the war for folks on the home front. Since the Second World War, advances in technology are taking place with breakneck speed. Radio, the main mass entertainment medium when I was growing up, was pushed into the background by television. Television changed the way we lived and experienced current events. Those of us with TV sets could experience the events of the Korean war in our living rooms. This was merely a hint of things to come. The collective impact of those theatrical newsreels would soon be gone, replaced by the more immediate, but more lonely witness of television. Instead of a collective gasp of recognition in a movie theater, we were able to work out our emotions to public events in the privacy of our homes. While most of us were being transfixed by the miracle of television, another revolution was beginning: the computer was called ENIAC. It took up a whole room and used a lot of electricity when it ran. Although ENIAC had no practical uses, it did prove that the computer could work. The invention of the transistor paved the way for smaller and smaller computers that could actually be used by mere mortals. I got my first computer in 1979. Most of my friends wondered why I had that strange looking object sitting on my desk. They gave me a hard time for using my primitive word processing program. A typewriter was much easier to use, they said. I kept on using my computer with a twinkle in my eye, because I knew I had a tiger by the tail. The personal computer has proven to be a equalizer in the lives of many people with disabilities. With PC’s, more of us can independently read, write, organize, compute and play. Personal computers are becoming a staple of many homes. I read a newspaper report last year that said computers outsold television sets for the first time in history. I find this amazing, and apparently other people do, too. There is another revolution going on in the computer world. People no longer sit in front of their computers and work in isolation. They are discovering that it is much more useful to hook their computer to other computers by a telephone line, sharing information with people and organizations all over the world without leaving the house. This is the idea behind the information Super-highway. I believe telecommunications will have a great impact on the lives of people with disabilities. This issue of Alternatively Speaking explores the information super-highway, what it means to people who rely on AAC, and how to find the nearest on-ramp. This article appears in AS Volume 2, # 3. You may order this issue by clicking on Ordering Home Page Online Ordering 
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