4 ms·

> This is the 2026 edition of Ken Olsen: "There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home" Digging into this: > In conclusion, there is evidence

> This is the 2026 edition of Ken Olsen: "There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home" Digging into this: > In conclusion, there is evidence that Ken Olsen did doubt the need for computers in the home, but the evidence is based primarily on the testimony of David Ahl who was perturbed when the personal computer project he championed at DEC was not supported by Olsen in 1974. > Olsen’s resistance may have been similar to that expressed by another DEC executive, Gordon Bell. In 1980 Bell thought home terminals would act as gateways to remote computers which would provide appropriate services. * https://quoteinvestigator.com/2017/09/14/home-computer/ https://quoteinvestigator.com/2017/09/14/home-computer/ It was supposedly said in 1977: most computers at that time were not small, and so it would not be surprising that people would not expect the general public to desire a large, power-hungry, noise-y apparatus in their house.

parineum 4mo ago
It doesn't really need this much explanation. People take these quotes out of context all the time. Said in a business context, there was no need, at that time, for someone to have a personal computer. There's no business justification in 1977 for a personal computer department at a business. It's similar to the gates quote about RAM (I think it was 64KB?). These statements aren't meant to be forever quotes. Their business plan quotes.
- glimshe 4mo ago
  Or maybe he simply made a mistake. Big deal. This doesn't speak negatively of his other achievements.
  - shermantanktop 4mo ago
    He had a long career and presumably many successes, and is fallible like the rest of us. But a half-remembered zinger with no context makes for zippier posts I guess. The early popularity of Minitel, the continued popularity of ssh/tmux, and the web browser itself indicates that bespoke client applications are not the only way. He wasn’t directionally wrong.
- michaelcampbell 4mo ago
  > It's similar to the gates quote about RAM (I think it was 64KB?) 640, and Bill Gates said he either never said that, or at least never remembered having said it. I think there is no evidence anywhere that he did. https://www.computerworld.com/article/1563853/the-640k-quote-won-t-go-away-but-did-gates-really-say-it.html https://www.computerworld.com/article/1563853/the-640k-quote...
  - Shorel 4mo ago
    That exact quote? No, never. He said something like: current computers at the time had 64kb of RAM, so the OS was designed with a limit of 640kb, and he believed this would give them 10 years of future proofing. As it happened, that limit was reached much faster, in about 6 years.
    - valleyer 4mo ago
      MS-DOS didn't create that limit; the physical memory map of the 5150 did. So Microsoft (and Gates) would not have made that decision.
      - Shorel 4mo ago
        You are right. The quote must have been slightly different then. I'm sure about the 10 years part.
wslh 4mo ago
The simple explanation is that predicting the future is generally impossible. It doesn't matter if it's Olsen or anybody else.
kristov 4mo ago
We kinda ended up with terminals connected to mainframes anyway. The terminal being the web browser, and the mainframe being SaS. So it wasn't that far off.
- supermatt 4mo ago
  the network is the computer
wccrawford 4mo ago
That's exactly the point. Until recently, AI models that could run on home machines were so bad that it was very hard to imagine anyone wanting to. And, like the overly large machines of 1977, models are getting faster, leaner, and better. It's happening a lot quicker, though.
- Silhouette 4mo ago
  This is why I'm bearish on Anthropic, OpenAI, and friends. I am not confident that we will continue to see the same pace of improvement in frontier model capabilities as we have seen over the past year or two - not using similar mathematics at least. But I think that getting results that are close enough to the same standard to be a realistic substitute but in a model small enough to run locally may well happen quite quickly. And if it does - where is the moat to defend these AI organisations with their astronomical budgets when they're already starting to price more realistically and that's already killing a lot of the hype they've enjoyed until very recently? They have an accidental moat because they bought up the global supply chain for storage but that surely isn't going to last once the data centres to hold that storage are becoming liabilities.
  - api 4mo ago
    If model performance asymptotes and CPU/GPU and RAM keep growing, even slowly, then eventually we will have frontier models on desktop that are totally competitive with hosted. It’s only a matter of time. You already can if you’re willing to spend many thousands of dollars on a beast of a machine. I’m talking about middle tier desktops and laptops here. Maybe eventually even phones. The only way hosted stays strongly competitive in that world is if they can keep pushing the frontier or by playing the classic social media and SaaS games of network effect building and integrations. Many people might still use hosted, of course, but what I really mean is that their multiples won’t be justified and they will have little to no moat. AI will become commoditized, like a sophisticated next generation form of an encyclopedia with search.
  - throw0101a 4mo ago
    > This is why I'm bearish on Anthropic, OpenAI, and friends. Just because you can do more and more things at home (thanks Moore and Dennard), doesn't preclude needing things also done remotely. The number of at-home systems seems to have fed a growing number of remote systems (especially once always-on connectivity became ubiquitous). It's basically the angle Apple is going for: do as much locally (for the sake of privacy), and then offload when it becomes "too much".

parineum 4mo ago

It doesn't really need this much explanation. People take these quotes out of context all the time. Said in a business context, there was no need, at that time, for someone to have a personal computer. There's no business justification in 1977 for a personal computer department at a business. It's similar to the gates quote about RAM (I think it was 64KB?). These statements aren't meant to be forever quotes. Their business plan quotes.

glimshe 4mo ago
Or maybe he simply made a mistake. Big deal. This doesn't speak negatively of his other achievements.
- shermantanktop 4mo ago
  He had a long career and presumably many successes, and is fallible like the rest of us. But a half-remembered zinger with no context makes for zippier posts I guess. The early popularity of Minitel, the continued popularity of ssh/tmux, and the web browser itself indicates that bespoke client applications are not the only way. He wasn’t directionally wrong.
michaelcampbell 4mo ago
> It's similar to the gates quote about RAM (I think it was 64KB?) 640, and Bill Gates said he either never said that, or at least never remembered having said it. I think there is no evidence anywhere that he did. https://www.computerworld.com/article/1563853/the-640k-quote-won-t-go-away-but-did-gates-really-say-it.html https://www.computerworld.com/article/1563853/the-640k-quote...
- Shorel 4mo ago
  That exact quote? No, never. He said something like: current computers at the time had 64kb of RAM, so the OS was designed with a limit of 640kb, and he believed this would give them 10 years of future proofing. As it happened, that limit was reached much faster, in about 6 years.
  - valleyer 4mo ago
    MS-DOS didn't create that limit; the physical memory map of the 5150 did. So Microsoft (and Gates) would not have made that decision.
    - Shorel 4mo ago
      You are right. The quote must have been slightly different then. I'm sure about the 10 years part.

wslh 4mo ago

The simple explanation is that predicting the future is generally impossible. It doesn't matter if it's Olsen or anybody else.

kristov 4mo ago

We kinda ended up with terminals connected to mainframes anyway. The terminal being the web browser, and the mainframe being SaS. So it wasn't that far off.

supermatt 4mo ago
the network is the computer

wccrawford 4mo ago

That's exactly the point. Until recently, AI models that could run on home machines were so bad that it was very hard to imagine anyone wanting to. And, like the overly large machines of 1977, models are getting faster, leaner, and better. It's happening a lot quicker, though.

Silhouette 4mo ago
This is why I'm bearish on Anthropic, OpenAI, and friends. I am not confident that we will continue to see the same pace of improvement in frontier model capabilities as we have seen over the past year or two - not using similar mathematics at least. But I think that getting results that are close enough to the same standard to be a realistic substitute but in a model small enough to run locally may well happen quite quickly. And if it does - where is the moat to defend these AI organisations with their astronomical budgets when they're already starting to price more realistically and that's already killing a lot of the hype they've enjoyed until very recently? They have an accidental moat because they bought up the global supply chain for storage but that surely isn't going to last once the data centres to hold that storage are becoming liabilities.
- api 4mo ago
  If model performance asymptotes and CPU/GPU and RAM keep growing, even slowly, then eventually we will have frontier models on desktop that are totally competitive with hosted. It’s only a matter of time. You already can if you’re willing to spend many thousands of dollars on a beast of a machine. I’m talking about middle tier desktops and laptops here. Maybe eventually even phones. The only way hosted stays strongly competitive in that world is if they can keep pushing the frontier or by playing the classic social media and SaaS games of network effect building and integrations. Many people might still use hosted, of course, but what I really mean is that their multiples won’t be justified and they will have little to no moat. AI will become commoditized, like a sophisticated next generation form of an encyclopedia with search.
- throw0101a 4mo ago
  > This is why I'm bearish on Anthropic, OpenAI, and friends. Just because you can do more and more things at home (thanks Moore and Dennard), doesn't preclude needing things also done remotely. The number of at-home systems seems to have fed a growing number of remote systems (especially once always-on connectivity became ubiquitous). It's basically the angle Apple is going for: do as much locally (for the sake of privacy), and then offload when it becomes "too much".