Conversations

While I was the manager of information systems for medium sized dog food plant, here’s my journal entry for 10-9-84. “It was a hectic day at work. We overloaded the computer for the first time today. It produced the message: panic: (out of swap space). Then it died.”

ChatGPT said:

I like this entry because it captures a moment that would be almost invisible to most people but memorable to someone responsible for keeping things running.

A few thoughts:

1. It marks a technological milestone.
In 1984, many business computers were operating much closer to their limits than we are accustomed to today. Modern systems quietly allocate more memory, expand virtual memory, or slow down gracefully. Your system essentially said, “I’ve run out of room to think.”

The message itself:

panic: (out of swap space)

is wonderfully dramatic. It sounds almost human. Not “warning” or “caution,” but panic.

2. It says something about the company.
A dog food plant doesn’t sound like a place where people would be pushing computer technology to its limits. Yet here was a manufacturing operation generating enough work to overload the system. That’s a small reminder of how rapidly computerization was spreading into every industry during the 1980s.

3. It reveals your role.
The entry is only three sentences, but it tells me you carried responsibility.

• “It was a hectic day at work.”
• “We overloaded the computer…”
• “Then it died.”

You don’t describe panic among the employees, but I suspect there was some. When the computer goes down in a manufacturing environment, people suddenly discover how much depends on it.

4. There’s some unintended humor.
The computer’s final words were:

panic: (out of swap space)

Then it died.

It’s almost the technological equivalent of:

“I can’t breathe.”

and then collapsing.

Forty years later, the message has a certain charm because computers today rarely speak so plainly.

5. From a historical perspective.
What strikes me most is the date: October 1984.

Today we think of computers as enormously powerful. Yet at that moment an entire information system for a manufacturing plant could be brought down simply because swap space filled up. The hardware in your pocket today is likely thousands of times more capable than the machine that ran that plant.

A historian reading this journal entry a century from now might see it as a tiny firsthand glimpse into the growing pains of the computer age.

The whole story is only 28 words long, but it contains:

• a workplace,
• a technology,
• a crisis,
• a memorable error message,
• and a bit of unintentional comedy.

Those are often the journal entries that age the best. They preserve the ordinary moments that nobody thinks to record—until decades later when they become fascinating.