Tales of Silicon Valley: The work-at-home revolution
Culture
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>> Silicon Valley is full of stories, some pretty, some not. This is one of those stories.
[ Sounds of gunshot and typing ]
>> Halen Lindell [assumed spelling], pioneering tech journalist, tells how he participated in the beginnings of the work at home revolution.
>> Halen Lindell: I was one of the first editors of a magazine called "InfoWorld." It's a great little publication. As this Promethean technology was coming out, we got to travel to all these different businesses that were applying them, from Lucas Film to the Grateful Dead to, you know, the military simulators. Everything was using the computers. And what was great about the job was that I could actually go out to the story, collect the information, and then go home in Miranda--where I lived in Ross at the time--and write it on a computer. This was the computer I used, the NorthStar Horizon. And transmit it to the office in Palo Alto. Today that seems like norm.
>> Yeah. Just email.
>> Halen Lindell: But. Yeah, just--there was no email then. We actually had to call another NorthStar that was sitting at the InfoWorld headquarters in Palo Alto. And they'd have to handshake and connect. And you'd hear all these weird sounds on the modem. And then transmit your story. And you see it, you know, going across the screen. And this was the original, you know, type of boxes that we first did that with. Before that, you know, we had to come into the office. This was the machine that did that. This was the interface for just the modem alone. Just amazing. The work at home revolution. The channel 5 news came by and did this little graphic of me traveling, saving, you know, driving 80 miles to work and 80 miles back and all the gas I saved everyone because I could do this at home. And this was the beginning of that revolution.
>> Look for more tales of Silicon Valley at CNET TV.com.
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