One future and then another

The delivery never arrived. We were working at DECUS, Digital's user society conference in Anaheim in November of 1989. I was part of the team representing Digital's technical documentation group. We had a booth where we'd display bookshelves filled with big, honkin' three-ring binders of documentation about DEC's software, hardware, and other products and services. We'd also be showcasing our latest offering, technical documentation delivered electronically on a CD-ROM. We had workstations set up so that customers could try out the product, called Bookreader, that would let them browse manuals electronically.

via DECUS Notes


The shipment of big, honkin' three-ring binders didn't show up. We had, if I recall correctly, three bookcases, six feet tall and empty.
One of the fundamental principles of show business is making something from nothing. I took three of the CDs, put one on the middle shelf of each bookcase, and printed up a sign that said something like "Welcome to the future of documentation." It was true. We could fit a bookcase-worth of documentation onto one CD. The booth set-up made it look like we planned to do it this way.
Yep, this was the future and we felt pretty smug about it.
And then, one morning, on my way to the exhibition hall, I stood, as the Brits say, gobsmacked in front of a TV in the hotel lobby. Jubilant people were climbing over the Berlin Wall, breaking pieces with whatever they had, shouting to their brothers and sisters and aunts and uncles and to all of us, triumphant. Berlin is some nine hours ahead of California, so it was dark there already, but the darkness couldn't stop anyone anymore.

via This Week In Peace History

In 1997, Sandra and I visited Berlin. We found our way to the old Checkpoint Charlie station. We crossed from west to east and it was like going from color to black-and-white. We walked for many blocks through the old East Berlin, along broad streets with everdull Soviet architecture. For 1DM, we bought a chunk of concrete that the kindly old woman said was a piece of The Wall.

There was still plenty of rubble where the wall once stood. The West was just starting the process of repatriating the East, a cost that most everyone wanted to pay because, well, it was something that they could not not do.