Some of it is amusing, when considered in modern terms -- for instance, the discussion of writing in higher-level languages presenting a fifty-fold advantage in

Some of it is amusing, when considered in modern terms -- for instance, the discussion of writing in higher-level languages presenting a fifty-fold advantage in productivity over writing in assembly. But the bit that I found the most prescient was the following: Assuming the availability of practical micro-wave communication systems, it is conceivable that one or several computers, much larger than anything presently contemplated, could service a multitude of users. They would no longer rent a computer as such; instead they would rent input-output equipment, although as far as the operation will be concerned they would not be able to tell the difference. In this fragment, Bemer was almost certainly referring to something like MULTICS, in which the model was that there would be one mainframe per city, and that computing time would be billed like electricity, water, gas, or any other utility. But, I can't help but to think of a Chromebook when I read this. A Chromebook communicates wirelessly (even the lowest of the bands that it might speak on, 700MHz, is still well and truly considered microwave), and although it is technically a computer of its own, it serves more than anything else as an input-output node for rental time on Google's services or AWS. Indeed, everything old is new again -- but hearing it from this article put it in a different light for me.