Where we were, when
I might not know where we’re going, but I know where we’ve been. In a nutshell, the story of the PC. I know, because I was there.
Back BC (before children), I had spent all of my summer wages, on a personal computer. The machine, by specifications, was almost BCE (before common era). 64K of RAM, a processor from Zilog, multiple diskettes. And portable, as long as you were keen to have one arm longer than the other. This was in the period before IBM making computers that didn’t require a dedicated wing on your science building. The first (almost) personally relevant computer. I have it still, and I bring it out on high holidays as they say.
But while this was my toy, I also needed to work for a living, and I accidentally ended up in the chaos of the personal computer, in a school setting. Kept me employed, honorably, for better than three decades. I saw a lot of hardware come and go, and brand names carried mystique. We were snobs, in the same way that any niche industry people are.
Tonight, I had a chance to screen a documentary about the early days. In the same way that a Rubik cube has different “faces”, so does the computer industry. As a consumer, I wasn’t paying attention to the frantic swimming required to tread water (in a financial sense), so I rather enjoy learning about where it “was”.
For those who want to know more about how an idea became one of the largest industries in the world, you may want to watch Silicon Cowboys.
