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The pc was designed to summarize and compute an infinite mass of statistics and was used to tabulate a part of the 1950 inhabitants census and your complete 1954 financial census.
Born in 1923, in Greensboro, N.C., Stephens out of the blue discovered himself on the vanguard of the pc age — in addition to the reducing fringe of a slowly desegregating federal forms.
“I did okay,” stated Stephens, who retired from the Census Bureau in 1981, as chief of pc efficiency analysis. He had additionally established the bureau’s first digital pc upkeep operation and did a variety of educating and coaching that helped others transfer forward.
Mitigating the stress and strains of the job have been his pals within the Consorts. A gaggle of 20 Black males with skilled jobs — docs, attorneys, judges, authorities officers — gathered as soon as a month for dinner and poker. And, each New 12 months’s Eve, they held a gala with their wives and different pals on the Mayflower Resort.
What Stephens loved most was the camaraderie.
“We discuss no matter we needed to speak about,” Stephens stated of the month-to-month get-togethers. Couldn’t all the time try this at work, he stated. Typically, not even at house.
However the challenges posed by the pc age have been solely beginning. The 8-ton Univac 1 — which stuffed a big room — gave method to the private desktop pc and ultimately turned sufficiently small to slot in a shirt pocket.
Stephens was aghast at among the developments that adopted — reminiscent of “social media,” during which “pals” may very well be made with the clicking of a mouse and dropped simply as rapidly with a thumbs-down emoji.
“The brand new technology just isn't fairly like my technology,” he stated. “They spend an excessive amount of time in entrance of a pc display eager to be preferred. I believe the pc is destroying our youth as a result of they're shedding actual life-learning expertise.”
From 1969 to 2014, Stephens served as chairman of the group’s social committee. He was answerable for placing collectively the annual New 12 months’s Eve get together, which turned the speak of the city.
“Having males like Robert nonetheless concerned helps us admire how a lot has modified in his lifetime — but additionally what has not modified,” stated Andre Wells, an expert occasion planner who turned the social chairman after Stephens. “We nonetheless have the identical want for pals. We nonetheless have a necessity for enjoyable. To be taught from one another. The youthful guys have mentors who can provide recommendation on every thing from office points to learn how to be grandparent. For the older guys, being round us helps maintain them younger.”
Konrad Dawson, a plastic surgeon in D.C., joined the group final 12 months. He stated he enjoys getting dressed up and being with good folks to ring within the new 12 months. “Too many occasions within the media, you get these portrayals of what it means to be Black in America which are adverse. You continue to have lots of people on this nation, Black and White, that don't know that there's a vibrant Black center class on this nation. We're nonetheless largely invisible.”
Stephens stated he hopes that the quantum leaps in pc energy don’t undermine what stays of human interplay. “From what I can see, social media is doing extra to tear folks aside than carry us collectively,” he stated.
In protest, he tries to have as little interplay with all issues computerized as doable.
“When private computer systems got here out and our daughter needed one, he dismissed them as ‘toys,’” recalled his spouse, Blanche, 92. Not way back, she stated, her husband lastly purchased a cellphone. “A flip telephone, the most cost effective one — in case of an emergency,” she stated. “It has no digicam or any apps. Simply makes and accepts calls. However he gained’t arrange the voice mail. He says if anybody calls and he doesn’t reply, they will name again later.”
For 2 years through the coronavirus pandemic, the group met over Zoom and likewise used the web to order Valentine’s Day presents for his or her wives.
Stephens conceded that the “pc has modified the world in good and dangerous methods.”
Again within the Nineteen Fifties, Stephens and different members of the group would maintain their conferences at Black-owned eating places, the place they might cling round after eating and generally even play playing cards. Nowadays, folks can use their smartphones to make reservations at any restaurant. But it surely’s often rush in and rush out, no hanging round after.
Furthermore, as a substitute of computer systems making work simpler (and ending the usage of copy paper), work for a lot of has turn out to be more durable and the work hours longer.
“It was that when Friday work was over, you had the weekend off,” Stephens stated. “Now, individuals are in entrance of these pc screens on a regular basis. They stare so onerous so lengthy they will’t even sleep at night time.”
Wells provides that elevating a household and dealing to pay payments will be exhausting, and a few folks simply don’t have time for social gatherings.
Stephens just isn't considered one of them. After all, there are occasions when he simply doesn’t really feel like getting up and going out. However the members of Consort will name and supply to select him up, take him to a gathering and convey him again. Typically, simply understanding that he’s being held in excessive regard will energize him.
The Stephenses had reserved a room for New 12 months’s Eve night time on the Mayflower Resort. Earlier that day, they packed up the tux and robe and ready to ring in a brand new 12 months.
Requested if he had fun, Stephens replied, “It was okay.”
Requested if he had made a New 12 months’s decision, he stated, “I’m too outdated for that.”
He’ll be 100 in July. The couple has hardly ever missed the gala because the Nineteen Fifties. So, if computer systems haven’t destroyed the world by Dec. 31, count on him to be able to get together along with his social membership, not on social media as soon as once more.
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