Living the Technology Revolution: How life has changed since I was a kid

This isn't a book filled with dry timelines or technical blueprints of the digital revolution. Instead, it's a firsthand journey—my journey—through one of the most astonishing transformations in human history: the rise of personal computing and the dawn of the digital age.

I was born in November 1955, at a time when the word “computer” was barely whispered outside of military labs and universities. My earliest memories include a bulky black-and-white television with rabbit-ear antennas, broadcasting a single channel. That flickering screen was my first encounter with electronic media—a far cry from the high-definition, touch-responsive world we live in now.

Over the decades, my path as an engineer and software developer placed me squarely in the midst of this technological upheaval. I didn’t just watch the future arrive—I helped build it, one line of code and one innovation at a time.

This book is a personal time capsule—a chronicle of what it was really like to live through the shift from analog to digital, from typewriters to tablets, from rotary phones to the infinite power in our pockets today. If you're a younger reader curious about how we got here, or someone who remembers the glow of vacuum tubes and the clack of punch cards, I invite you to walk with me through the decades.

You may be surprised by how far we’ve come—and how much we’ve forgotten along the way.

Many of the chapters are identified with the years or periods of time where these changes occurred.

© 2025 Martin K. Ettington (Audiobook): 9798318367731

Release date

Audiobook: May 24, 2025