As I check my calendar this evening in London as I prepare to return to New York, I remember that it would have been my father’s 71st birthday tomorrow…

My father was amazing.  He loved technology.  He taught me calculus and how an LED worked.  He also helped me nail the basics of macro and micro economics, and how to write a business email.  He explained Information Theory, showed me radio waves on an oscilloscope that we kept in the kitchen, and told me of the Feynman Lectures.  Because of him, I love Bizet and Bruce Springsteen.

He is my first Geek Hero, having managed the research department at British Telecom and before that he made really fast switches at Bell Labs in New Jersey after completing his PhD in electronic engineering.  He was also awarded an honorary professorship from the University of Wales, granted the Freedom of the City of London and was the Chairman of the BT Technology Journal, as well as being a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical Engineers in London.  I am hugely proud whenever I speak of him.

I find it incredible to think what he’d make of technology in 2010, specifically the advances in telecommunications technology and the Internet since 2004 when he died.  In 2004 there were no iPads or iPhones, and Internet speeds were tortoise-like compared to today.  There was no Broadband Plan in the US and we did not all carry BlackBerries (I wonder if he’d have been glued to his like I am mine).  There was no Twitter or Facebook outside US universities or Foursquare.

His last major article was for the Millennium Edition of the BT Technology Journal.  The edition considered telecommunications in the future, today and in the past.  He wrote of the importance of understanding where we’ve come from technologically to really understand where we’re going in our future developments.  Wise words.  He also spoke of the coming “data wave” and how “voice communications will be relegated to a similarly marginal position that we now give to Morse code telegraphy!”  What a conversation we’d have about this now…

Dads often give really good advice.  Mine not only was good at the regular Dad Stuff (avoid wearing open-toed shoes to the office if you’re a chick, and Worcestershire Sauce makes cheese on toast taste much better), but also he was really an amazingly clever telecommunications expert.  His love of technology had such a huge influence on me.  As I sit here eager to return to NYC for Internet Week beginning on Monday, I know he’d have been Skyping me and emailing me to discuss every new Twitter trending topic next week.

(Text above, quotes and picture: BT Technology Journal, Volume 18, Number 1, January 2000, SpringerLink – http://www.springerlink.com)