Embracing Tech’s Wild Ride: Punch Cards to AI.

I still remember the day when someone asked me if they could just send me an email instead of a FedEx package. I was so annoyed, even frustrated. “Why can’t they just send it the proper way?” I thought. Little did I know, that moment was a microcosm of every technological shift I’ve lived through: initial resistance born from comfort in the familiar, followed by reluctant adoption, and ultimately, profound empowerment. I’m going to date myself in this one, but my story starts with punch cards. Looking back from those punch cards to AI, a tool I use daily that literally can do nearly anything today, one lesson stands out — embracing change isn’t just about survival: it’s about thriving.

New technologies have been transformative throughout history and each one, destroying old technology and their respective employment on the way. The old technology cemetery is littered with examples from ice boxes or horse drawn carriages to the more modern casualties phone books, paper maps, typewriters, pay phones, fax machines, palm pilots, VHS taps and so much more.

The Apple II to AI

My technology journey actually began thanks to Steve Jobs with an Apple II personal computer my father brought home one day. I don’t think he ever used it, but I did. I pecked away at BASIC, making the screen spit out pixelated patterns or solve math problems. I could actually type in a bunch of lines and it would actually do something. Sure, I didn’t have a real use for amortization tables at age 12, but I was amazed and I was hooked. Today, I am even more amazed at what I can do now. AI has unleashed that 12 year old (now with decades of experience) to build and create daily.

The Office Time Forgot

Fast forward to my first job as an intern in the late 1980s, where tech was a giant mainframe and punch cards. There were very few personal computers across the sea of desks. At that time, there co-existed really old school methods like paper ledgers, typewriters and a few PCs with word processing. I vividly remember one co-worker rejecting the use of the computer while chain-smoking at her desk. Colleagues, ledger wizards with decades of expertise, loathed relearning. They feared losing control, their mastery unraveling.

I felt differently, knowing that I could do things in a fraction of the time with the latest Lotus 1–2–3 or Paradox, the latest database program. I wasn’t in the technology group, but I embraced its value. I quickly became an expert on streamlining workflows, developed actual spreadsheets, downloaded mainframe data, created graphics and became a versatile and valuable employee. The lesson? Resistance is just fear of fading. Lean in, and you’re not just relevant — you’re the trailblazer.

Fedex and Facsimiles

The late 1980s brought new tech and sped up life. FedEx’s overnight deliveries made distance irrelevant, and fax machines — screeching like banshees — zapped copies in instantly. This was the first real leap forward in the psyche of business people. Things no longer took a week or two, they were near instant. To the legacy group it felt like they were caught in quickly shifting sands, but to those who embraced this new technology it brought a new level of productivity.

Beepers and Mobile Communications

The 1990’s saw the next wave. Up to then personal communications were limited to the hard lines at the office or at the home. Does anyone even still have a home phone? First came the pagers, but then the big one — the mobile phone. It was big by today’s standards and expensive and didn’t work everywhere but it was a must-have. You certainly didn’t want to breakdown or have an emergency and not be able to call someone.

The consequences? Now you were available 24/7. Office hours became blurred and business accelerated again. Those who embraced the new tool, made deals, sales or whatever just faster. Adoption came quickly and so did the improvements. It didn’t take long for things to take business into a dead-run. Palm Pilots were the rage (goodbye Rolodex) but that lasted for a short minute before the newest mobile phones took that feature.

Rapid Fire Improvements

This was the dawn of the internet age. Emails became the norm. I went from preparing executive presentations, printing them and binding them myself and making sure I made the 7PM FedEx cutoff to just sending the entire package with an email. Just another efficiency added. Business accelerated again as now communication no longer needed you to be there to answer the phone.

Next up? The Blackberry! The gold standard of business executives — phone, contacts and email together. This took all the rest of the friction out of communication. Now you could send a message from your mobile device again pushing things a bit faster. For many, perhaps the more successful, the lines between personal and business time were gone. In some investment banks it became a badge of honor to send out emails at 2AM on Sunday. I’m not saying this was healthy, but there it was. There was no going back. When the iPhone appeared and much more intuitive interface and the app store — there went the Blackberry.

Websites and E-Business

The dot-com boom turned everything “e-”: e-commerce, e-learning, e-verything, as if slapping an “e” on it made it futuristic. Websites made data flow like a digital river. Many dot.com era companies came and went. The prospects pushed ahead of adoption and many resisted this new wave. However, the ones who incorporated this new e-verse into their business well, succeeded. At first it was slow as the old-timers grudgingly started to accept this world.

But now look-Amazon can literally deliver one of my books to you by tomorrow. Or toilet paper or that fungal cream you need, all by tomorrow. You don’t have to go to the store and have an awkward moment with a cashier. You get that time back. A whole new dimension of interaction was created accelerating business again.

Social Media, YouTube, Netflix, Uber and So Many More

Things seemed like a mini-plateau. Websites were great with more and more abilities, but then came whole new business models. Social Media went from grandparents checking on the grandkids with Facebook to a major economic driver — Facebook marketplace, Instagram and more. YouTube went from showing some home movies to hugely disruptive forces. Year after year provided an audience for voices other than from traditional networks. Alternative viewpoints could be shared and detailed supporting information (except for Covid era censorship, of course).

Netflix is even a bigger disruptor to the traditional entertainment sector. TV without commercials available at any time — Netflix for the win. (Ironically now it is showing me commercials) Then Uber or Lyft made it easy to get a taxi AND easy to make extra money with your car. Traditional taxis lost value instantly, but so many more people were empowered.

In many ways, each of these items seem like the norm to us living now. We’ve had many of these for a decade or more, but that really wasn’t that long ago. And each of these continues to evolve and become more efficient. And business people need to understand the reach and scope of these venues. Things are completely different than not that long ago in the past — 10 or 15 years.

AI’s Takeover

In 2023, I met ChatGPT 3.5, and my brain did a double-take. My daughter was a senior in college and I was visiting for senior night. We were deciding what to do for the night, when she casually mentions that she has a take-home exam due by 10PM. I instantly panicked, but then she showed me ChatGPT. I watched as she loaded in a complex, multi-part question. The result was world shaking. Where was this tool when I was in college? So after I finished judging her for the short-cut, I needed to learn more.

Ever since, I have been exploring ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Grok and don’t forget Manus.AI and Deepseek and others. AI has proven to be the most powerful tool I have ever experienced. Amazing and scary all at the same time. The recognition that the world I know or knew, is forever changed. I think most people don’t even realize the capabilities of AI or haven’t even asked ChatGPT a question.

Google delivered the ultimate search engine and knowledge was at your fingertips or so we thought. Then ChatGPT did all of the reading through the search results for us. Whether you know it or not, the traditional search is dying if not dead already. Another seismic shift.

Painful Lessons Ahead at Break-Neck Speed

Now, I’m juggling 3–5 AI interfaces daily, from drafting emails to crunching data. I create programs for everything from email assistants, chatbots to trading programs and a couple fun math games for my youngest. For me the issue isn’t that I can create, it is what do I spend time to create. I recognize that most people are not like this. Most are focused on daily jobs and don’t get into the weeds so deep, but whether you want it to or not, AI will be a part of your life in a big way.

As I see frequently on Medium, writers, designers, editors — all lament the disruption. Who can blame them, having your skill set replaced and the livelihood you’ve built gone is a tough pill to swallow. While they may say that it misses the nuances or it just doesn’t too as good a job, it doesn’t matter. Even if it is just 80% as good, it is as bad as it will ever be right now. The missing 20% will be cut down with the next update.

The message here is do not fight this — it is a losing battle. Embrace it and try to figure out how you can use it. Take your expertise and add that 20% to the 80% and develop your unique product that is more scalable. Instead of one client at a time, maybe you can take on 10 or 50 with this tool.

Tech’s Escape Velocity

The speed of innovation of this technology and its capabilities is epic — beyond light speed. It seems every week, there are new updates — New tools that are no in my quiver. Create video from a snapshot — check. Create an AI podcast — check. Write a new program to sort my emails-check.

I believe it is now impossible for the average person to keep up with the pace of innovations. We’ve seen just in the past 6 months, companies built around earlier versions of ChatGPT instantly obsolete with the newest update. The barriers to entry have dropped to nothing and entrepreneurs can compete at a scale like never before.

What Do We Do Now?

How do you embrace this technology when it is moving this fast? That is the billion-dollar question. The reality is that you can‘’t, but you can focus on the fundamentals of a business. Life goes on outside of technology-eat, sleep, etc. Technology is a tool to make things more efficient, professional and scalable, but it is not a reality-based business. The best we could hope to accomplish is to use these amazing tools to augment our businesses or create a new business with their help. Don’t ignore these tools, embrace them.

Start by solving one pain point in your life or business. I recently was speaking with the owner of a granite counter-top business. Like most businesses over the past 10 years has seen dramatic improvements. However, the pain points are still there. He told me that when a customer wants alternative quotes, it ends up being a lot of busy work, chasing materials with assorted vendors and then communicating with the customer. The back and forth ate hours of a day.

This could be an AI streamline opportunity — have your AI agent send the requests for materials to several vendors at once via email and then have it check for results and putting that into updated quotations. This sort of solution is not even on their radar, but it is possible. What took hours could be theoretically take no time. That’s the power of AI.

Thank you for reading.