By Jean A. Hollands

In the 1950s I reported for a test for a job. They said I scored so high in logic that I could be trained to be a programmer. I asked, “What’s a programmer?”

I left the 1950s with years of programming and systems analysis under my belt.

In the 1960s we started seeing a few more and much smaller computers around.

In the 1970s Steve Jobs said to me, “My dream is to see a computer on every business desk in the world.” In a few years I was walking the business district of Auckland, New Zealand, where, peeking in the windows of downtown financial businesses, I observed every desk had a computer!

You all know what Intel’s Gordon Moore said about the microprocessor, and we are amazed at his predictions. The Texas Instruments calculator moved to the innumerable bites of today.

Then came the Internet and the Web. We have a whole new vocabulary for those babies.

Finally, and not last, of course, in our technical creativity, is the world of the blog.

Every man, woman and child can have his or her own blog. Blogging satisfies the egomaniac who believes he has an opinion worth reading. Scrambling companies want to know how to make a blog an inexpensive advertisement. Oh dear, we get so much electronic communication that public relations people are now recommending the beloved snail mail, which people might start opening again. Blogging is frightening and exciting us all.

With almost a million bloggers already, what brilliant mind will find the perfect use for those of us who think we need our words to be read? Blogging was great for Olympians who wanted to chronicle their journey last summer. Many celebrities and authors have a blog or so. You may also try it. We will all be blogging along together. Who knows what journals will catch on. Who knows what N-blogs or Q-blogs or W-blogs will be the next era for us? It does give everyone a chance to try talking to the rest of us.

I personally like it when people admire an article I write. But what is my blog-o-meter rating? Will I start having bloggets? Blogging may fill some empty nights for some people - those who don’t go to ball games, play cards, have dinner parties, sing in the choir, volunteer at the hospital, carry animals to shelters, or, oh my stars, write a letter in longhand to a grandmother.

Did I know that Jobs would be right?

Jean A. Hollands, M.S., is founder and chairwoman of the Growth & Leadership Center in Mountain View. For more information, call 966-1144 or log on to www.glcweb.com.