H.I.S.-tory by Vince Ciotti

Episode #75:

TechnologyThen & Now

© 2012 by H.I.S. Professionals, LLC, all rights reserved.

An HIS Diversion…• If you’ve been following these HIS-tory episodes on HIS-talk, you

might have wondered where they’ve been the past few weeks…– (Or you may have thought “good riddance”!?)

• Well, my poor wife just suffered through her 40th year putting up with me and we decided to retrace our honeymoon from 1972 when we rented a VW Beetle and drove all over Europe for a month.

• I was pretty much out of touch during the trip, so for fun this week I’ll cover how technology has evolved in those 40 years – not so much in HIT, as I was lucky enough to avoid European hospitals, but in common, everyday things like cars & boats & planes...

Terror In The Skies!• The trip started with the terrifying experience of this dimwIT

leaving his laptop in the Denver airport the week before we left!• Now, like a good IT pro, I back up my laptop regularly, but had

spent several days on the road writing emails, updating SSs, etc.• You busy CIOs can imaging how much time you’d waste if you lost

2-3 days worth of work and had to re-do everything, so you’ll know how thrilled I was to receive this message the next day:– “This is officer O’Donnell from the Denver police – we have a

your Apple MacBookPro laptop if you would please call…”• Someone had advised me a few years back

to tape a business card to the keyboard in case it got lost, so let me pass the advice on to you all: it’s cheap, low-tech and amazingly effective! So the panic subsided and we headed off to Europe with my Mac!

Planes Then & Now• We flew over on a massive Delta Airbus A330-300 at ≈600MPH,

with the usual array of today’s high-tech stuff: on-board WiFi, noise-cancelling headsets, movies/CDs on a personal screen, etc.

• From memory, back in 1972 we were on a TWA Boeing 707 that also did 600MPH, but with nary an electronic amenity. Being newlyweds we spent a lot of time kibitzing to pass the 8 hours, but I sadly noted how this year with all the electric do-dads, we barely spoke on the flight. Some oldsters married as long as I might say “So what?” but it’s a sad side-effect of our 2012 e-progress...

• Aviation buffs may recognize this photo I took in 1972 of an Air France Concorde at the Paris Orly airport – we couldn’t afford it’s $2K tickets back then, when it did Mach 2 or about 1,200 MPH, cutting the flight time in half! The fleet was sadly retired after a tragic accident a few years back, with no supersonic replacement planned.

Automobiles Then• Back in ‘72, we rented this VW Beetle, a bit of

a let-down from the ‘67 Austin Healey 3000 we drove back in the states. But the bug got great mileage (≈30 MPG), critical in light of Europe’s $5/gallon gas, and actually drew crowds in back-water towns of France & Italy!

• It was totally manual, i.e., nothing was “power:”- Brakes, steering, trans, windows, me, etc.

• The dash was so simple you barely noticed it: a speedometer was the only instrument – not even a fuel gauge! It held about 10 gallons so you bought gas about every 300 miles or else.

• Performance was pathetic: it took forever to wind through the 4-speed manual gears, so you were forced to look at the beautiful country…

Automobiles Now• This year we rented a Peugeot 308cc Diesel,

that also got 30+ MPG, sorely needed in light of today’s $9 per gallon gasoline (diesel was “only” ≈$7/gallon). It came with so much automation I actually thought about reading the owners manual… but never did – I was too busy trying various buttons & switches!

• Event the roof was power-driven, as was everything else on the car (except me): steering, brakes, trans, windows – even the rear-view mirrors could retract at the push of a button – handy on some of the incredibly tight side streets of Marseilles, Milan, Nice, etc.

• The most amazing level of automation was the dashboard, dominated by a GPS screen that not only gave directions, but also controlled the radio and alerts.

Dashboard “EMR”

• “Alerts” you ask? Check the screen above to see how the screen beeped loudly and flashed a warning icon when the right front corner of the car was too close to another car while I was trying to park in a tight space in Arles (yes, Van Gogh’s joint!)

• The shots on the right show how these marvelous devices are still programmed by humans, however. The “roads” it would take us on were sometimes little more than one-lane alleys or even driveways! Some fascinating parallels to our (over?) reliance on EMR order sets, medical alerts, etc.

Cell “Phonies”• One of the best parts of the trip was that my el cheapo Verizon cell

phone did not work in Europe (wrong SIM card). Even if it did, at $2 per minute for international calls, I would’ve never turned it on!

• Sadly, just like us, Europeans today are totally taken by these handheld addictions, as witnessed by this street scene on the Champs-Elysees in Paris which by luck I had snapped 40 years ago from the same spot. Note how the trees have grown since then to block the Arc De Triomphe, but that same red awning is still there.

• Saddest of all, note how today’s Parisians and tourists are totally absorbed in their PDAs, oblivious to the people & beauty nearby…

1972 2012

Boats, Then & Now• We were lucky enough to take a “Hovercraft” to cross the English

channel from Calais to Dover 40 years ago, and captured it in this shot below. An amazing vessel, it flew (literally!) across the waves at about 80MPH with nary a bump or shimmy from the waves.

• These amazing craft carried 50 cars and several hundred passenger, our only complaint being the trip was so short we barely got to enjoy the view!

• They were retired after 30 years of service in 1998 and replaced by the “Chunnel.” See the next slide for the view today while driving through this modern engineering replacement…

View From the Chunnel

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Reformed Luddite• Lest I sound too much like a Luddite, there is one area of

technology that today is so much better I’m enthralled with it: • Digital Photography! – the grainy pictures on the left from 1972

were taken on a Kodak “Instamatic” camera we borrowed from a friend back then, scanned and retouched via Photoshop today.

• By contrast (no pun intended), take a look at how much better the Notre Dame Cathedral looks on the right compared to the pathetic, hand-aligned panorama I pieced together 40 years ago – Vive La Difference!

Next Week• Back to business, as we return to the thrilling days of yesteryear

and the roots of today’s leading vendors, picking up with CPSI.• Test Question: how many people know the meaning of those four

letters without Googling the answer?• Well, I was privileged to steal an hour of two CPSI veterans on the

phone to chronicle the amazing story of this tiny vendor that has since overtaken both Keane & QuadraMed in annual revenue:– David Dye, former CEO and current Chairman of the Board– Scott Schneider – former VP of Marketing and current EVP

• They promised some pictures of the firm’s 1979 founders, “Kenny and Denny,” two names I had never even heard of before, so stay tuned to catch this fascinating story next week. And if you have any gems to share about CPSI, please forward them to vciotti@hispros.com – I’ll give you all due credit (or blame!)