The Superior Express -

10-14-21

Over the weekend I heard a man, who finds the current time challenging, comment he would prefer the quieter, less stressful time of the 1960s.

I suspect his statement reveals his age.

With the Great Depression, Dust Bowl and WWII in their past, I never knew anyone who longed for the less stressful 1930s and 1940s if they were adults during those two decades.

I could long for the quieter, less stressful 1950s of but I must acknowledge I was a child in the 1950s and my parents provided a stable home with all the necessities.

The 1960s were a stressful time for me. I experienced the 1960s and I don’t want to return to those years. I was making education and career choices. The country was rocked by the Cold War and I feared the Russian Communists might attack at any time. I worried about nuclear war and weapons fired from space. Racial unrest rocked our nation, political leaders like brothers John and Robert Kennedy were assassinated as was Martin Luther King. Young men of my age were being drafted and sent to fight in the jungles of Viet Nam. Friends never returned.

For me, the 1960s were anything but quiet.

The world is constantly changing and we must adapt to those changes.

I don’t like many of the changes and wish they hadn’t happened but they have happened and we can’t go back.

I remember hearing a farm machinery dealer say 40 years ago the manufacturers and dealers would be better off if the largest tractor ever built had less than 60 horsepower. He may have been right, but bigger tractors were built and today few 60 horsepower tractors are found on our farms.

My first computer modem (the device which in the 1980s allowed personal computers to send information via a telephone line) transmitted at the rate of 300 baud. It was replaced with one that transmitted at the rate of 1,200 baud. I tried to go to 2,400 baud but the phone lines between our offices would not handle such a blazing speed. I have faster 56K modems that have never been used and never will be for dial up systems are obsolete.

If you are like me 1,200, 2,400 and 56k is just mumbo-jumbo so I looked up a chart which compares the speed.

The first modem was used by the U.S. Military in 1958. It operated at a speed of 110 baud. This week’s newspaper contains pictures of 5MB or greater size that were transmitted to our office via the internet. If we were using the original Sage modem, it would have taken 116 hours, 30 minutes and 30 seconds to transmitt a 5MB picture provided the phone line wasn’t dropped. The 1,200 baud modem we first connected offices with would have taken about 10 hours to transmitt aa 5MB file. The 2,400 baud modem would have done it in less than 5 hours. A 56k modem would have completed thee transfer in 12.5 minutes had the phone lines handled such blazing speed, With today’s average broadband speed, the transfer could be made in just more than 1 second.

It takes us a few seconds longer because we haven’t upgraded all of our computer gear to handle the faster speed.

When the internet began to gain popularity, I helped promote training sessions held at the Superior High School. A telephone company executive came by the newspaper office and told me to stop promoting such meetings as internet service would never be available in small towns like Superior.

A few years later, the company he represented began offering dial-up internet service. I was so eager to experince, I signed up on the first day the service was offered but was the company’s second Superior customer. Another Superior resident beat me to the office on sign-up day. He has since died and I have become the company’s longest term Superior customer.

When it became evident the schools, library and hospital needed a faster service, the phone company wasn’t interested in offering more than dial-up. The Superior Utilities Department stepped-in and connected the facilities with Superior’s first fiber optic line. Another company provided the T-1 line to connect Superior to the World Wide Web. The plan was to expand service to all of Superior but the Unicameral passed a law which sunk the utility department’s plan.

That law may have slowed but it didn’t stop progress. Speeds have continued to increase and other companies have entered the market place. Today Superior residents have the choice of wireless internet or fiber to the home service. If it even exists, I can’t image anyone being content with dial-up service.

It was exciting to learn last week that a partnership between South Central Public Power District and Glenwood Telecommunications is developing a plan to provide a high speed fiber optic communication option to all Nuckolls County residents served by the electric utility. South Central will install the cable and Glenwood will operate the system.

When I went to country school, the school didn’t have a telephone. If the teacher needed to make a telephone call, she left one of the older pupils in charge, left the school and went about two miles to the nearest telephone. There she turned a handle to signal the operator who placed the call. Now many of us carry cell phones in our pockets and are almost never out of touch.

Rita’s mom now lives in an assisted living facility. Because of COVID access is restricted. To stay in touch with her family, she has a magic box in her room. To make calls to others who have smilar equpment, all she has to do is say, “Ziggy call and insert the person she wants to talk with. Ziggy will connect the two via a picture phone we once only deemed about. Thanks to Ziggy and modern technology, she is able to see and talk with her great-children in Maryland. With the proper connections, they can move about and show their great-grandmother things like their pet chickens and rain falling on their yard. Two weeks ago she watched them play soccer.

The addition of fiber optic lines and blazing fast internet will open the door to many opportunities rural residents never dreamed of in those supposedly “simpler 1960s.”

Are we better off today or should we long to return to a simpler time?

I’m not sure we are better off but I don’t want to go back. I dream of going forward, not backward. Had our ancesstors not wanted to improve their lot, the New World were never have been settled by Europeans.