Hands Up

Recently, we introduced a second industry-strength offering to the blogosphere

Hands up all of you who remember the computer program SuperCalc. Really? Just me then. Part of our short-lived computing heritage gone and forgotten. SuperCalc was the Wordstar-bundled spreadsheet that changed the face of computing, from rich man’s toy to business necessity. It was computing’s first killer app and although it was overtaken first by Lotus 1-2-3 (yup, hands up if you remember that, too) and then Excel, without SuperCalc we’d probably never have taken to the PC business desktop seriously.

Now, we can’t live without the PC in business. Chances are, if you’re in the bus industry, you’ve been using a standalone PC since the late 1980s (but some NBC subsidiaries were as early as 1984), and for email and later internet access since about 1998. Strange thought, really. Has it really been that long since the internet was gradually adopted?

10 years ago, we spent considerable time pondering whether the internet might be a useful bus industry sales tool. For every one person who felt it might be, two did not. Think of that. Those who did, felt that the internet might best add value if linked somehow to real time information or in running passenger competitions. How wrong we all were, back then. How many bus operators do you know who offer online games, quizzes and the like? And how many link into RTI?

10 years ago, we actually missed the point about the internet. We didn’t realise it would become the first port of call for a generation seeking just about anything. We had no conception that we could contribute to vast searchable databases of journey information to generate Traveline data. We certainly didn’t think a slick web presence would ever be more useful or important than a pamphlet, leaflet, timetable, or person on the end of a phone.

But then again, we none of us knew where the internet would be heading. We’d never heard of the emerging and euphonious Google. Instead, we used hokey old Alta Vista or Lycos.

Now, hands up anyone brave enough to predict what technology the bus industry will be using in ten years’ time? Really? None of us?