European Stars and Stripes (Newspaper) - January 01, 1990, Darmstadt, Hesse                                Page 4 the stars and stripes monday tuesday. January 1/2,1990 1980s revolutionized by computers by Michael h1mow1t/ Baltimore evening Sun Ike had a Hook report that was Din last week. It never occurred to him to Wruck it longhand. He turned on his Apple and pecked away for an hour or two. When he was finished he sent the report to his Dot matrix Printer. But he was t satisfied he asked if i could retype the report on my per Sonal computer. Your laser Printer makes it look a lot he tier than mine  he said. Meet my son. The desktop publisher and child of the 80s. Ike was Horn when the decade Hogan. I bought pm first computer when he was 3 years old. As a child of the 50s. I thought electric typewriters were " Otic. The it was absolute a if. Tor in the pc is 3 i Stuie. Like the Telemma j i. Me uses i l at Home. He uses lint1 at whorl. He sees computer commercials Between the saturday  cartoons. In Short he is part of the first generation that won t in member life without computers. Kor millions of us w to do remember life without computers the and vent of the pc during the 80s changed the Way we worked and played. Today there arc More than 25 Mil lion personal computers in the United states. Almost half of the White Collar workers in the United states use some kind of computer and 20 to 30 percent of . Homes have pcs. During the 1980s, word processing software changed the face of offices and schools. Spreadsheet and data base programs running on inexpensive pcs freed corporate workers from the tyranny of data processing departments. It also levelled the play ing Field and put Small businesses on the same footing As the giants. Meanwhile common on hard Ware and software Gac us Access to vast libraries of information. They gave us new ways to Exchange that information and freed us from the confines of the office. The development of lightweight portable pcs even gave us the ability to take the office with us. In the schools pcs offered a tremendous potential still largely unfulfilled to improve american education. And on the Home front computer games and dedicated game machines brought us an entirely new form of entertainment for belter or worse. Personal computers spawned an entire Industry. As America s traditional manufacturing base declined. Its High tech industries flourished. By the end of the decade microcomputers were generating $38 billion a year in sales. More important personal computers were something entirely new. They brought  Back its Scott a mow in the past six years prices of personal computers have fallen from As High As $5,000 to 51,000 for comparable systems. To life. Kids started computer Compa Nies in garages that made them millionaires while billion Dollar Compa Nies tried to enter the pc Market and fell on their faces. While they improved productivity and expanded our horizons personal computers came with their own prob lems. We had to learn a new and con fusing vocabulary. Previously Happy wives became computer widows computer anxiety took its place in the Long list of phobias from which we suffer. Reading writing and Arith Metic were no longer enough for our kids. They had to be computer liter ate too. Computers also brought new hazards to the workplace. Long hours in front of the computer spawned a whole new lexicon of diseases and syndromes. We worried about expo sure to radiation and magnetic Fields. Thousands suffered from yes brain. Headaches and painful repetitive motion injuries. A decade ago even the wildest speculators failed to predict the pc explosion. When the 1980s began there were fewer than 400,000 pcs in the country. Early pc users were computer enthusiasts. They had to be. Early pcs were slow and awkward. Software was crud or virtually non existent. The major players Apple radio Shack and a Host of smaller competitors fought it out with a Host of incompatible standards. Ironically it took ism Champi on of the mainframe pm Putur to make the Small computer one of the decade s hottest Sellers. In fact. Ism coined the term personal computer when it introduced its first pc in 1981. The ism imprimatur and the development of powerful programs such As the Lotus 1-2-3 spreadsheet started an explosion of pcs in the business world. Other manufacturers jumped on the bandwagon with cheaper computers for the Home. A Public infatuated with machines that co ii Piny Pac Man balance a Check Book and it a letter snapped up Home computers As fast As manufacturers could turn them out. By 1983. Pc sales had jumped to 1.6 million a year. The Home pc craze bottomed out after a couple of years As users be came jaded with machines that were not powerful enough too expensive to upgrade or Loo hard to use. But As the Price of computer Mem Ory plummeted and clone makers Learned How to produce ism compatible machines Industrial strength pcs became cheaper and even More powerful. They even began to show up in the Home. Today $1,000 will buy a computer that would have Cost $5,000 just six years ago. While ism led the Way to the computing of the 80s. Apple provided us with the pathway to the 90s. Apple s macintosh introduced in 1984. Was the first computer that was easy to  and Friendly the graphics based Point and shoot interface of the macintosh redefined the look and feel of personal computing. Cou pled with a laser Printer the Mac also created an entirely new line of human Endeavor desktop publish  the next decade most computers including ism s will be have a lot like the Mac. They will be smaller faster cheaper and even easier to use. Operating systems will give them the capacity to do Many things at once. Using the same technology now used by compact disc players they will incorporate full action video and stereophonic sound. So stay  by in lot Anoff to to we Laiglon pot Newt so vim government raises income Levels for disabled Washington a the new year brings new rules that will raise the amount of Money recipients of govern ment disability benefits can earn the department of health and human services announced. Has Secretary Louis Sullivan said the increases will serve As an additional incentive for Many disabled americans to return to work and improve the Quality of life for themselves and their  the rules will affect recipients of so Cial Security disability insurance and supplemental Security income who arc not Blind. Under the programs recipients arc Al Lowed to earn up of a to Nail amount and still receive benefits. On Jan. I. Those allowed earnings lev Els were to increase for the first Lime in at least a decade. The new rules change the trigger for the trial work period during which a disability insurance recipient continues to receive benefits for nine months after returning to work.  january 1979, a recipient has entcre.1 a trial work period when he earns More than $75 a month or works More than 15 hours a week. Thai will increase to $200 or 40 hours. An ssi recipient s benefits an reduced by $1 for every $2 in earnings Ovet $65 a month. When the recipient s earnings reach the substantial gainful activity level which has been set at $300 a month since january 1980. Benefits can continue Only under certain conditions. Thai trigger will Rise to $500. The allowed earnings level for Blind recipients is set by another regulation and is $740 a month. That will Rise to $780 on Jan. I a social Security spokes Man said. The disability insurance program pay about $1.7 billion each month to 2.8 Mil lion workers and 1.2 million dependent spouses and children of disabled work ers. About 3 million Blind and disabled workers receive ssi benefits