Page Content (OCR)
In 1979, Apple Computer had begun selling the first home computer floppy disk operating system for data and program storage that kicked the microcomputer revolution into a higher gear. Not only could users input data via a keyboard or tape cassette player, they could store relatively large amounts of data, such as documents or mathematical projections, on transportable, erasable, and interchangeable Mylar disks that the computer was able to read. Now the computer reached beyond the electronics hobbyist into the work place. By the end of the year, MicroPro's introduction of the first fully functional word processor called WordStar, and Personal Software's release of the very first electronic spreadsheet called VisiCalc, so transformed the workplace that the desktop computer became a necessity for any young executive on his or her way up the corporate ladder. And by the early 1980s, with the introduction of the Apple Macintosh and the object oriented computer environment, not only the workplace but the whole world looked like a very different place than it did in the early 1960s. Even Dr. Vannevar Bush's concept of a type of research query language based not on a linear outline but on an intellectual relationship to something embedded in a body of text became a reality with the release of a computer program by Apple called HyperCard. It was as if from the year 1947 to 1980 a fundamental paradigm shift in the ability of human kind to process information took place. Computers themselves almost became something like a silicon based life form, inspiring the carbon based life forms on planet Earth to develop them, grow them, and even help them reproduce. With computer directed process control programs now in place in virtually all major industries, software that writes software, neural network based expert systems that learn from their own experience in the real world, and current experiments under way to grow almost microscopically thin silicon based chips in the weightless environment of earth orbit may be the forerunner of a time when automated orbital factories routinely grow and harvest new silicon material for microprocessors more sophisticated than we can even imagine at the present. Were all of this to be true, could it not be argued that the silicon wafers we recovered from Roswell were the real masters and space travelers and the EBE creatures their hosts or servants? Once implanted successfully on Earth, our culture having reached a point of readiness through its development of the first digital computers, would not the natural development stream, starting from the invention of the transistor, have carried us to the point where we achieve a symbiotic relationship with the silicon material that carries our data and enables us to become more creative and successful? Maybe the Roswell crash, which helped us develop the technological basis for the weapons systems to protect our planet from the EBEs, was also the mechanism for successfully implanting a completely alien non- humanoid life form that survives from host to host like a virus, a digital Ebola that we humans will carry to another planet someday. Or what if an enemy wanted to implant the perfect spying or sabotage mechanism into a culture? Then the implantation of the microchip based circuit into our technology by the EBEs would be the perfect method. Was it implanted as sabotage or as something akin to the gift of fire? Maybe the Roswell crash in 1947 was an event waiting to happen, like poisoned fruit dropping from the tree into a playground. Once bitten, the poison takes effect. "Hold your horses, Phil, " General Trudeau would say when | would speculate too much. "Remember, you've got a bunch of scientists you need to talk to and the people at Bell Labs are waiting to see your report when you've finished talking to the Alamogordo group. " It was 1961 and the miniaturization of computer and electronic circuitry had already begun, but my report to the general and appointments he was arranging for me at Sperry-Rand, Hughes, and Bell Labs were for meetings with scientists to determine how their respective companies were proceeding with applying miniaturized circuitry into designs for weapons systems. The inspiration for microcircuitry had fallen out of the sky at Roswell and set the development of digital computers off in an entirely new direction. It was my job now to use the process of weapons development, especially the development of guidance systems for ballistic missiles, to implement the application of microcircuitry systems to these new generations of weapons. General Trudeau and | were among the first scouts in what would be the electronic battlefield of the 1980s. "Don't worry, General, I've got my appointments all set up, "| told him. | knew how carried away | could get, but | was an intelligence officer first, and that meant you start with a blank page and fill it in. "But | think the people at Bell Labs have already seen these things before." And they actually did - in 1947. 74