The estimable Ron
Friedman, who’s been covering legal technology since 1989, has
done a nice recap of
the past 25 years of legal technology for The
American Lawyer. Two messages here:
- No matter how much you may bitch and moan at technology today,
it’s useful to be reminded how far we’ve come. I personally recall
when Davis-Polk used vi for word-processing. (Count yourself
fortunate if you’ve never heard of "vi"; it’s a UNIX text editing
program [with apologies to the Slashdot crowd].) - Predictions of where technology will go are utterly useless;
the only meaningful rule is to be ever-vigilant, flexible, and
to adapt.
Sometimes in reading articles like Ron’s I am momentarily seized
by the desire to be 10 years old again, just so I could live to see
another generation of technological innovation. But then I
remember the purgatory that was adolescence and come to my senses.
