For use: Friday, September 15, 2000 and thereafter

Future Shoes: "Two Old Techies"

by Michael Finley

Copyright (c) 2000 by Michael Finley

I had the pleasure the other day of having coffee with an old friend, the original owner and publisher of Computer User, Dale Archibald.

If Dale had been a gangster, he'd be considered a Mustache Pete now, one of the old-timers who went about the business when it was just came into existence.

He started this magazine with a few hundred bucks and a head full of enthusiasm for what was happening with the original PCs and Apple II machines. When you hear about the pioneer user groups and computer clubs in the Bay Area and Northwest, Dale was the Midwestern equivalent.

He and I became friends online before we ever met, hanging around a handful of Twin Cities bulletin boards, with names like Backfence, Ivory Tower, Illusions, and Test System. It was a great way to chew the virtual fat around an imaginary fire.

Dale was astonished, as a publisher, at how big the computer business got, and how quickly it got that way. When he sold the paper after a few years, it was partly because the years immediately ahead looked to be mostly about business applications, whereas he was always drawn more to the gadgety side of technology. He liked seeing how things worked.

After selling Computer User, he burnt numerous bridges to his old pals by working for a competing publication. I saw him at BBS "runs" with other online pals; he didn't care. Our paths crossed again when he became a service consultant to my ISP, and I found myself on the phone to him whenever things took a southerly turn.

Then he moved to Sacramento, and I figured I'd sent the last of him. But this summer he resurfaced in Saint Paul as a genuine Silicon Valley tech writer on holiday. Prosperity oozed from every pore. "There's gold in them thar hills," Dale told, rubbing two fingers against his thumb.

Oh, he taunted me, knowing I'm in no position to pack up stakes and head for Californy. "The work is plentiful and it ain't that hard to do," he said. "And the money -- my, my, my!"

The saturation of Silicon Valley continues to be an ironic contradiction to one of information technology's biggest promises: that geography no longer matters, that a person can do anything anywhere, with computers. Except design them, I guess.

The whole thing is astonishing to me, Mainly because I could remember when Dale was the one computer journalist I knew with as shaky a grasp on technology as me. And here he was, on his feet and then some, with that big smile playing on his face.

A hero of the tech wars. A role model for our children.

And playing golf every chance he gets.

America!