40 years of being an Adult

Thu, 12 Nov 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Today I turned 58, which means that, according to UK law, I’ve now been an adult for 40 years.

The changes I’ve seen in technology have been huge and fascinating to look back over. But the story around those changes has been pretty much the same, over and over again.

When I was 18, the household phone was wired into the wall by the back door. You didn’t dare make a personal call before 6pm because of the cost. And there was always the fear of a family member overhearing a call with your friends. For private calls there was the call box down the road, but that needed coins.

We did have a family computer, and I remember using WordStar and dBase III on it. I also remember the family row when it was upgraded to dBase IV. There was lots of shouting about how much of a change it was, and if we should have discussed the change first. Forty years later, I’ve heard variations of that argument throughout my career. The discussions may be quieter now, via emails and Teams meetings, but they are still just as passionate.

AI isn’t new

Three years later, I was at university studying computer science, and one of the modules was AI. One story stuck with me. They had an AI doing translations from English to Russian. So the test was to translate into Russian and then back again into English.

Original phrase: “Out of sight, out of mind”
Back-translation: “Invisible idiot”

So AI isn’t new and neither is it making mistakes. It is just a lot easier to access nowadays. And yes I confess, the image for this post is AI generated, what are those extra small floppy disks?

The Age of PCs

My first job was rolling out personal computers, PCs as we learnt to call them. We took away terminals to access the mainframe and gave people PCs with Windows 3.11 with Word and Excel.

People hated the mice. They forgot to save files because you didn’t have to on the mainframe. Hard disks would fail, no-one backed up their local drives. Excel 4 macros introduced me to the concept of what we’d now call citizen developers and shadow IT.

I also helped on the company help desk, so I enjoyed the delights of forgotten passwords, complaints about software changes and the frustrations of using systems. The technology might have changed but I’m fairly certain help desks today still get similar calls.

And Now?

My house contains more processing power than most companies had 40 years ago. I can vibe code applications that would have taken a whole team weeks to develop. I can have a Teams call across the world before 6pm and not worry about the cost.

The technology has changed, but we haven’t. However much we like the new and shiny, adjusting to new tech when we just want to get our job done is hard work. Given time, we adapt and we work it out. But if the change wasn’t our choice, comes at a bad time or is a complete surprise, no-one can be shocked that we resist it.

So when you sit with an elderly relative, watching them struggle with the latest bit of technology, be patient. They haven’t missed the technology revolution. They lived through it all and have the scars to prove it.

Adoption on Hat Full of Data

40 years of being an Adult

AI isn’t new

The Age of PCs

And Now?