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It's amusing and amazing that anyone with so many very wrong notions could have been taken seriously in 1967. I'm not saying he was wrong about everything, jus

by tgflynn 12y ago

It's amusing and amazing that anyone with so many very wrong notions could have been taken seriously in 1967. I'm not saying he was wrong about everything, just almost everything. Here are a couple of gems: Twenty years hence, an institution that’s the equivalent of a steel mill in terms of mental work—MIT, for example—might well have its own computer. Technically there is no reason why Sears, Roebuck could not offer tomorrow, for the price of a television set, a plug-in appliance that would put us in direct contact with all the information needed for schoolwork from kindergarten through college. So there were no computers at MIT in 1967 (So what was that Whirlwind thing back in 1948) but Sears and Roebuck could have invented the Internet that year. I think by far the most twisted notion in the article is the idea that little changed between 1913 and 1967. I'm pretty sure technological change during that period had more impact on the average Westerner's life than any other 54 year time span in history. It takes a very peculiar world view to completely ignore the invention of television or to consider a biplane as being basically equivalent to a jumbo jet.

gd1 12y ago
Strange, I read it and had the opposite reaction. With the exception of the 'steel mill' quote you mentioned, I think he got it mostly right. Even that can be argued to be right to a degree, for a time the mainframe model was in vogue and now we're moving towards the 'cloud'. The little change mentioned between 1913 and 1967 was with reference to the overall trajectory of industrial economies, not technological innovation. The main thrust was about the increasing importance of knowledge and information, where he was spot on.
- tgflynn 12y ago
  Yes but that's a very broad observation that I suspect many people could have arrived at. Generalization is important but if the person doing the generalizing is so ill-informed about the details of their world I think the likelihood of their generalizations being correct is rather low.
- bewo001 12y ago
  If you replace 'steel mill' with 'data center', he was not so far off. At least if you don't count phones, tablets, laptops as computers.
brazzy 12y ago
> So there were no computers at MIT in 1967 You cpmpletely misunderstood that paragraph. He said that MIT would still have its own computer in 20 years because knowledge is its core business, but that other institutions would, instead of owning their own computers, use rented ones remotely. He was basically predicting cloud computing.
coriny 12y ago
"I think by far the most twisted notion in the article is the idea that little changed between 1913 and 1967. I'm pretty sure technological change during that period had more impact on the average Westerner's life than any other 54 year time span in history. It takes a very peculiar world view to completely ignore the invention of television or to consider a biplane as being basically equivalent to a jumbo jet." That's not what it says at all. He states that the 60s economy is still dominated by technologies that pre-date 1913. He even specifically cites the economically dominant technologies, instead of the vague assertion, "I'm pretty sure ...". He particularly notes aeroplanes and computers as being invented during that period and can be expected to have enormous economic impact. Which they did, but hadn't by that point. The same with television. Looking at the rest of your comment, I kind of think you should delete and reread the article. Every criticism is incorrect or unsupported - like the MIT crack. He's clearly talking about the "thin client" approach to providing computing - he was wrong, but it was not an unreasonable supposition to make.
- gioele 12y ago
  > He's clearly talking about the "thin client" approach to providing computing - he was wrong, Aren't Chromebooks, tablets and smartphones thin clients to Google's mainframe, Facebook's mainframe, Apple's mainframe? What processes the Siri commands? Who calculates the directions in your navigator?
  - coriny 12y ago
    Yep, sure. The thin client approach has grown substantially recently, mostly I think due to improvements in networking. But the author was talking about "20 years time", so the early 80s. What we actually saw was the arrival of the domestic computer. That was the period in which computing became ubiquitous, and actual physical machines doing the processing locally could be found in every business and home. So, I would argue, that for the period he is talking about the fat client and stand alone models were much more dominant than the thin client, in contrast to his expectation. Or to use his reference point, nearly every university had its own computer in the 80s, rather than using a thin client to a host at MIT/Oxford/Harvard etc. And in general, despite the cloud, I think fat clients are still dominant. I.e. look at gaming, the majority of processing is still done locally, despite MMOs and the internet. EDIT: I think most people expected thin computing to dominate. But it turns out to be easier to manufacture and ship PCs around than data.

by tgflynn 12y ago

gd1 12y ago

Strange, I read it and had the opposite reaction. With the exception of the 'steel mill' quote you mentioned, I think he got it mostly right. Even that can be argued to be right to a degree, for a time the mainframe model was in vogue and now we're moving towards the 'cloud'. The little change mentioned between 1913 and 1967 was with reference to the overall trajectory of industrial economies, not technological innovation. The main thrust was about the increasing importance of knowledge and information, where he was spot on.

tgflynn 12y ago
Yes but that's a very broad observation that I suspect many people could have arrived at. Generalization is important but if the person doing the generalizing is so ill-informed about the details of their world I think the likelihood of their generalizations being correct is rather low.
bewo001 12y ago
If you replace 'steel mill' with 'data center', he was not so far off. At least if you don't count phones, tablets, laptops as computers.

brazzy 12y ago

> So there were no computers at MIT in 1967 You cpmpletely misunderstood that paragraph. He said that MIT would still have its own computer in 20 years because knowledge is its core business, but that other institutions would, instead of owning their own computers, use rented ones remotely. He was basically predicting cloud computing.

coriny 12y ago

"I think by far the most twisted notion in the article is the idea that little changed between 1913 and 1967. I'm pretty sure technological change during that period had more impact on the average Westerner's life than any other 54 year time span in history. It takes a very peculiar world view to completely ignore the invention of television or to consider a biplane as being basically equivalent to a jumbo jet." That's not what it says at all. He states that the 60s economy is still dominated by technologies that pre-date 1913. He even specifically cites the economically dominant technologies, instead of the vague assertion, "I'm pretty sure ...". He particularly notes aeroplanes and computers as being invented during that period and can be expected to have enormous economic impact. Which they did, but hadn't by that point. The same with television. Looking at the rest of your comment, I kind of think you should delete and reread the article. Every criticism is incorrect or unsupported - like the MIT crack. He's clearly talking about the "thin client" approach to providing computing - he was wrong, but it was not an unreasonable supposition to make.

gioele 12y ago
> He's clearly talking about the "thin client" approach to providing computing - he was wrong, Aren't Chromebooks, tablets and smartphones thin clients to Google's mainframe, Facebook's mainframe, Apple's mainframe? What processes the Siri commands? Who calculates the directions in your navigator?
- coriny 12y ago
  Yep, sure. The thin client approach has grown substantially recently, mostly I think due to improvements in networking. But the author was talking about "20 years time", so the early 80s. What we actually saw was the arrival of the domestic computer. That was the period in which computing became ubiquitous, and actual physical machines doing the processing locally could be found in every business and home. So, I would argue, that for the period he is talking about the fat client and stand alone models were much more dominant than the thin client, in contrast to his expectation. Or to use his reference point, nearly every university had its own computer in the 80s, rather than using a thin client to a host at MIT/Oxford/Harvard etc. And in general, despite the cloud, I think fat clients are still dominant. I.e. look at gaming, the majority of processing is still done locally, despite MMOs and the internet. EDIT: I think most people expected thin computing to dominate. But it turns out to be easier to manufacture and ship PCs around than data.