The time was 1979. I was doing a PBS television documentary called The Information Society. The TV special was looking at the coming of the information age and the end of the industrial age. At the time, computers were beginning to be seen in places like banks and grocery stores and even on the farms. But most people were not aware of these changes, and very few knew what a microchip was or had ever seen one.

So I picked several small cities and towns to visit to see the changes in action. One place I filmed was Cedar Rapids Iowa. My 16mm film team walked into a store selling computers and started asking questions. The manager of the store spoke out in this interview.

At the time, I was not savvy enough or smart enough or aware enough to know just how brilliant he was at understanding the future that was to come. He could see it and was convinced that everything would change as he describes. The coming of the Internet and the world wide web. The coming of personal computers to be used in America's homes. Computers to be used in schools and libraries. Computers being adopted and used by every business. Even computers that would be handheld and wireless.

Not everything that he saw coming is described in this interview clip because I wasn't smart enough to leave my 16mm camera rolling when the scene that I had come to film had ended.

16mm film was expensive and I was being careful not to use too much on what appeared to me to be irrelevant responses to my questions.

The store was crowded with kids and teenagers. I found this to be true in every city in America and I assume in other countries as well. These ahead of their time young folks could see this new information age coming. They were fascinated by computers and were trying out every computer in the store while we were there.

You can see the entire onehour documentary by searching the words "information society" on my YouTube channel.

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David Hoffman filmmaker