This Reminds Me

My brother David and I were always were fascinated by sci-fi.  Anything odd.  Futuristic.  Will Robinson was our hero, and Rod Serling our mentor.  We always wanted to know what was just down the hall and around the corner….in the Twilight Zone.

Mom dissed Rod as “just plain weird.” which, of course, made the show that much more appealing.

I think that early ingestion of sci-fi inspired us to be forwarding-thinking, at least occasionally.  Well, sometimes.  Okay, rarely.  Anyway…

I worked at Remco TV Rental through my five years at the University of Houston.  I started as a “gofer” but because the company was rapidly expanding, I got to grow with it and try my hand at all sorts of marketing, HR and sales ventures.  After the owner discovered I loved to read, he started flipping pamphlets, magazines and books on my desk with a “give me a one-pager” command.  Oh.  My. Gosh.  Talk about throwing me in the brier patch!  I was thrilled.  I devoured stacks of opinions and studies about the future of television which – interestingly enough – was often tied to the future of telecommunications.

Future Shock was the first non-textbook, non-Bible I’d ever highlighted.

After graduation, I interviewed with several companies, and had offers from a few.  But even though the jobs were what I wanted to do – write, create, organize – I couldn’t get excited about them.  I didn’t care about insurance.  Or personnel recruitment.  Or mining.  My reading convinced me that at some point in my life, there would be one telecommunications device in the home.  TV – with me – would be part of it.

Danger, Will Robinson!  Don’t go to work in an industry you don’t care about.

Al Gore hadn’t invented the internet yet.  I couldn’t have told you “IP” from “Dr. Smith,” but I knew that someone would build it, and we’d come.

I eventually interviewed with Southwestern Bell, and started there in 1979, just hoping to be some part of what I knew would come.  Sometime.  Somewhere in telecomm.  It didn’t come in 25 years of Training, Finance, External Affairs, Marketing, Sales Support, Sports & Events, Advertising or Online.  But darned if it didn’t emerge through a hand-picked team (including me) working on a new product called U-verse, a marriage of TV, internet and voice.  The techies throw up when I say this, but to me, it’s TV over the internet.  And it’s way cooler than anything else out there.  And I know it’s the way TV is going to be in the future.

Keith works on U-verse, too, and this week was happy for both of us as Total Home DVR launched in San Antonio.  We were up early to check it out, with Keith snatching remotes and verifying our ability to record then watch in any room.  The girls shared our excitement, so Rachel made this video.  Yes, it’s goofy.  But so is she.

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