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CW@60: Saying yes - the choices that carried me from a Commodore PET to AI
On 22 September 2026, Computer Weekly turns 60. To mark the milestone, we asked some of our friends - experts, parliamentarians, IT leaders and suppliers - for their perspectives on how tech has changed their lives over six decades. What's changed the most for you since then? In 1978, I was 18 years old, finishing high school in a small town north of Toronto, and holding university offers in three subjects - physics, engineering and computer science. I picked computer science for a simple reason - I thought it might lead to the most creative changes in society in my lifetime. Nearly 50 years on, I would say the hunch held up. Though I concede it is no longer a slam dunk, quantum technology and gene engineering are still in the running. But Moore’s law, Jensen’s gaming cards and Geoff Hinton’s backpropagation make a good case for computer science. It was a strange bet at the time. My parents were teachers who had never touched a computer. In 1978, the IBM PC was still three years away, and about the only place an ordinary person encountered computing was at the bank, where the tellers had terminals and the first cash...
