1950

Given they were still serving wine in school cafeterias until 1956 (and in highschool until 1981) I’m not surprised this man was not prepared for the taste of Coca-Cola ™ !

Having just watched the lecture, the only classified info I can recognize is the capabilities of 80s era satellites.

Given that, I think it’s quite a shame that the whole thing is only now available. Rear Admiral Hopper seems to have been someone who deeply understood both computers and people. The prescriptions she gives regarding “systems of computers” and “management” vs “leadership”, to name just two, are spot-on. Her lecture is quite grounded in what I’d call “military thinking”, but that’s just because she’s in a room filled with people who are of that life. In my opinion, everything she talks about is applicable to communities and businesses.

The general gist of the entire ~90mins reminds me of Project Cybersyn in its perspective on how computers could serve society.

The idea is neat, and there is a certain precedent for the approach in .htaccess files and webserver path permissions.

Still, I worry about the added burden to keeping track of filenames when they get used as stringed keys in such a manner. More plainly: if I rename a file, I now have to go change every access declaration that mentions it. Sure, a quick grep will probably do the trick. But I don’t see a way to have tooling automate any part of it, either.