The Mix of Nails and Chips
In speaking of convergence, I am reminded of my construction career experiences in the technology and commercial fields. First off, before the wireless era of internet access, I was a proud San Jose Union carpenter and had the rare opprotunity to work on a residential home for a superintendant of my company. I say "rare" because my normal scope of work entailed commercial buildings such as the now site of the Cisco System campus in Milpitas, California. Back to this home of the year 2000, the most amazing aspect of the house was that it was entirely wired for internet hook up in "basically" every room. Today wireless connection completes this vision of free in home access, but this house was revolutionary for its day. The amout of cable used in the interior of the walls made this project more "commercial" like than residential. At the same time, near 237 and 101 I was deep into building the multi-building campus of Cisco Systems. A project that lasted beyond five years. The high tech. buisness market was booming and capital money was plentiful. With these resources our client contracted us to build Cisco System's Internet House. Throughout the campus new technological devices were being toyed with for employee feedback. We built a daycare center ajacent to the buisness buildings for the convience of the family employee, but this was no ordinary babysitting location. A curious employee was able to connect to camera feeds within the walls of the daycare center. As well as, communicate instantly with staff. Remember this is the year 2000. Daily routine ideas were plentiful by the Cisco staff of developers in the likes of, having your house at the desired climate, and dinner cooking before ariving home, all from the office computer terminal. Convergence between these two industries has come along way from the amazing to the everyday, but for a humble carpenter, these years were enlightening.