Posted on 26 March 2008.
An article in the Boston Globe today discusses technology headed for the dustbin. I was surprised to see what fond memories I had of these objects. I’m sentimental about floppy diskettes, having spent hours as a kid installing various applications, games, and operating systems (DOS 6 was a dozen 1.44 disks, remember?). I remember the particular whir of the drive, how it sounded like a make-shift paper broom, quickly sweeping the floor. And whenever one spun for long enough, there came the faintest scent of warm, ionized plastic, as if your computer could double as an easy-bake oven.
It’s truly sentimental, I know, but increasingly people have feelings about their technology and companies are attempting to make the technology experience more tactile than cerebral.
The mainframe is long-dead; so too is the XT I built by hand its younger sister, the AT 286, and the super-fast 386 and the unbelievable 486 and so on. I think one wrinkle to Moore’s Law is that while computing speed doubles every 12-18 months, our ability to integrate it into our lives does not. The iPod has been around for nearly 10 years and finally tipped what, 3 years ago?
And that’s just consumer, personal technology. As a hospital CIO friend said, the healthcare industry is at the technology level manufacturing was in the 70′s.
In other words, floppy.
About Paul Griffiths
Paul has been CEO of MedTouch since April of 2007 and, prior to that, held the position of COO. As a co-founder, he has helped set the vision for the company from its inception. Paul is an active speaker in the healthcare marketing community. In addition to the dozen webinars MedTouch presents each year, Paul can be seen and heard giving lively talks around the country about helping healthcare organizations succeed online: from New England (NESHCo), to Tennessee (TSHPRM), Florida (FSHPRM), and Las Vegas (Annual Healthcare Internet Conference).
Prior to MedTouch, Paul managed online brand experiences for a variety of for-profit and not-for-profit organizations. He has over 15 years of combined experience in online commerce, interactive marketing, experience design and content management solutions. Most notably, he directed the consumer-facing channel for the now defunct Send.com, an online gift delivery network that raised $45 million from such VC luminaries as Greylock, Highland Capital, Benchmark and Charles Rivers Ventures in the late 1990s.
Paul earned a Master of Arts in Creative Writing from Boston University, and a Bachelor of Arts in Creative Writing from Sarah Lawrence College.
When he’s not traveling across the country to visit clients or to speak at healthcare conferences, Paul runs a humanitarian non-profit with his wife. He’s thrilled to finally have a yard for his dogs and two boys, and often daydreams of spending a summer in Iceland.
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