Paulson: When were you born and where?
Stevens: I was born in Miami Florida August 5 1944.
Paulson: Oh, nice. I actually didn’t know that. When you were a child what did you do
for fun?
Stevens: We lived way out in the country and had no kids near us. It was either a two-
mile bike ride into town to see my friends or we had a big forest behind us. So I would go in the forest and play there by myself. I spent a lot of time out there.
Paulson: What was life like before the modern conveniences we had today? Like cell phones, laptops, TV.
Stevens: When I graduated from college I went through college with a slide rule. There were not even hand held calculators. I can remember we got our first TV with a 6-inch screen in 1949 when I was 5 years old. And then we got our first color TV in 1958. We thought that was the end of the world. I can remember, I guess we were living in Norway and we were reading about these new things called cell phones that they were going to come out with, which was like in 1975. But they didn’t come out for almost 15 years after that. But we had no conveniences compared to what we have today. I learned to type on a typewriter. Went through college on a typewriter.
Paulson: Did you have to carry it around?
Stevens: I traded a bar bell set for a typewriter when I went to college, and the school I went to was a little country school. And in 8th grade all girls had to take shop and all boys had to take typing and home ec. So that taught me enough typing to get through college! And I didn’t have a computer. First laptop I got was probably around nineteen… 1990. Ok, so it’s only been like 20 years.
Paulson: Ok, so how about cell phones?
Stevens: Cell phone, ok the first cell phone we had was about the size of a lunch pail, and it was in my wife’s land rover. And that was about 1992.
Paulson: So was it like a car phone?
Stevens: Yeah, but it was a box that big [gestures to about 1.5 feet]. The first phone was about 1996, it was the first Motorola’s, the first flip phones. That was when I first saw them. I can remember living in England when I was negotiating contracts, we would negotiate the contract, put it in an overnight bag across the Atlantic to Texas. They would type up the new contract overnight it across the Atlantic to us and we would negotiate it again, but when the first fax machines came out we thought we’d died and gone to heaven.
Paulson: Really?
Stevens: So, ya know, the whole idea. I can remember in 1985 our engineers came to us and told us they wanted to get personal computers to do their work. And we thought, there’s no reason everyone had to have a computer. So we bought computers and put them on like tea trolleys and they would wheel them in and out of their offices. We didn’t think anyone would have to have a computer all the time. And then five years, everyone had one. That’s how quick technology changes. You’ve lived through technology changes as big as the printing press and the printing of the bible. With computers you just absorb it.
Paulson: That’s an interesting perspective. How would you say changes in technology has changed your life?
Stevens: Made it a lot easier. I think the biggest thing that has changed in my life is communications. Either interpersonal communications – being able to keep track of people via cell phones, facetime, we can see each other, talk to each other. I remember 1998-1998, we tried video conferencing with our office in Arkansas from Houston and it cost us like $20,000 to do it for a half hour. And now it’s all on our cell phones.
Paulson: That was 12 years ago.
Stevens: Yes, ok. It was just unbelievable. Technology is changing so fast. And also, I think communication from the standpoint that news is available from around the world on computers. We know everything that is going on around the world. Where in the old days. If you went out for a ride in the car or were gone for the weekend, a lot could happen and you would have no idea.
Paulson: Yeah.
Stevens: I mean, newspapers are becoming obsolete, at least I don’t know, in fact, I guess I look at the changes we’re going through. I say “I’ve lived through this”. I mean, my grandfather was a teenager when the first airplane flew. My dad lived long enough to see people walk on the moon. I’ve lived through the computer age. I can’t imagine what you and my grandchildren are going to see in their life. The change is that much faster. It’s going exponentially, so, I wouldn’t be surprised to see replaceable organs and everything else.
Stevens: I guess the other thing Lacey when you think about it, when I was in college and I was going through class everything was on the slide rule. Today, things that we couldn’t even dream of doing mathematically you can do in a whiz on the computer. And do thousands of iterations of it to get it right, where we never had that opportunity. So you guys have it easy!!
Paulson: Do you think you’d like college more if had all this stuff?
Stevens: Yes, I definitely would think that the ability to learn would be so much greater in this environment than when I was in school. Because with us everything was the printed work. It was the printed page – you had to read all the time. It was just, I would say the pace of learning was a lot slower than the pace of learning today. Just because of the technology and speed is so much faster and the visuals! The visuals are always better than the printed word – you can see video and things.
Paulson: Would you say the improvement in media outlets has improved your quality of life? Like the newspaper changing, having apps on your phone that has the news on it?
Stevens: Yes. Everything is instantaneous. Also, I think from the standpoint of convenience. Old days if you went to a movie you had to go down and look at the screen to see what’s playing, or look in the newspaper. Today you can pick up your handheld iPad or whatever you’ve got and you know everything. Not here – but in LA! Everything is available to you. To me, the computer, I mean we had a set of encyclopedia Britannica’s as a kid. I think I gave them away when my mom died. They were from 1951. Ok? That [motions to computer] is the modern day encyclopedia. Everything is in that computer. There is no reason that you can’t research anything you can think about today on the computer. In the old days you had to go to the library.
Paulson: Do you have any memories involving when you got your first television or color TV?
Stevens: The only reason I really remember the day we got our color TV was because I was playing JV Football and I got my teeth kicked out that day. I had just gotten home from the dentist after being all sown up and the new TV was there. My mom was trying to comfort me with it. That’s the only thing I remember about why we got it. I could talk about things that are interesting. I can remember being a little boy and our entertainment was we would go to the drive in movies. In 1951, up till then they could not make curved glass on automobiles. The windshield on the Chevrolet was actually two pieces with a bar down the middle of the windshield. In 1951 they were able to make curved glass. It was the first time we had a windshield without a bar in the middle. My dad thought that was the biggest thing, a big improvement. That’s just a little thing. But it seems like; when you’re a kid you’re oblivious to technology because you don’t really use it. The TV, the radio—I thought the handheld calculator was the biggest thing and that came out in 1965-66. I graduated with my bachelors in 66 and they were just coming in the bookstore when I graduated. But they were 300$ for a four function. AT the time a slide rule was like $30 so there was no reason to get it. No, but I am just amazed by technology, just wish I was gonna live till 100!
Paulson: What was it like going through the decades – all the civil rights movements and stuff? How was that?
Stevens: Living the north, you would hear about it on the news and newspaper. I remember when it was all happening, but because where we grew up in rural Michigan there were no blacks. There were no Hispanics. We really were insulated from it. You’re grandfather living in the Upper Peninsula was very prejudice against blacks and he never even saw one! I don’t understand how you can be prejudice against something you don’t know anything about, but no, I can remember the day Kennedy was shot. I actually had skipped out of a lab in geology class because I was bored with it. I walked into the commons and it was dead silent. Everyone was watching TV, I asked what happened and somebody said President Kennedy was shot. I said, “Yeah, right.” They said, “No, he really was shot”. Then I remember he got shot, his brother got shot, and MLK got shot. All of it three or four months between. That was when it really started to drive home to me, the civil rights problems in this country. Also, I had a fraternity brother who was black in college. We were the only fraternity when I was in school that did not have a clause saying that you could not pledge blacks. So we had two black fraternity brothers. He was from Georgia and had left Georgia to escape and came up to Michigan to go to school. I roomed with him and it was the first time I got to see their perspective of life.
Paulson: How was that?
Stevens: Ya know, it was interesting, Leon said that he grew up and he got out of high school. He wasn’t going anywhere with his life and he got in a gang fight where a guy was killed in it. He knew that if he stayed there, in Roan Georgia it was going to happen to him. He said he just started walkin and he left. Somehow he made it to Michigan, worked up enough money to go to college. Ended up getting a PhD in mathematics. It was a real story, but he was just telling how you have to get off the sidewalk if a white person was coming down. You couldn’t drink out of certain drinking fountains. You had to cross the street if they were coming. Things that I never even knew existed. Again, I’m probably not the person to talk to, because I grew up in the really white north.
Paulson: No, that’s crazy, because I’ve never experienced any of that.
Stevens: I think the prejudice that you’ve grown up through is mainly toward gays…
Paulson: So, I guess what were some important issues throughout your lifetime that you think media outlets and technology have helped bring – kinda like you said if not for technology you wouldn’t have known about all the assassinations.
Stevens: The space race was something that technology really brought to life. I mean, I can still remember sitting up late at night in Michigan and watching the TV and hearing John Glenn’s voice from the moon, when he stepped onto the moon. The pictures from space, it just opened this whole new world of science. I have always loved science and I think technology science is so much more. Where, if you want to look at the archaeology of the sedan all you have to do is hit a few key bars here and you’ll find out. But other events that shaped me, Cuban missile crisis that was all print media. I remember that. I was a senior in high school and that sort of hit me because I thought, “ you might be over there fighting. And then the Vietnam War. I ran the mile relay with four guys and two of them were killed in Vietnam. The only reason I didn’t go was because I got a degree in geophysics. Geophysicists were excused for a year. During that year, Todd was born and if you were a father you were exempted from the draft. Then they took that draft away and I was 26 or 27. By that time you aren’t impressionable enough to be drafted so I never got drafted.
Paulson: Oh, lucky!
Stevens: Yes! I mean I had so many friends get killed over there I’m glad I didn’t go.
Paulson: Well, that’s all the questions I had!
1 comment:
COOL! So fun to read about UNlce Al's life!
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