Computer Advances

From: Sam Ismail <dastar_at_crl.com>
Date: Thu Jul 17 19:53:47 1997

On Thu, 17 Jul 1997, William Donzelli wrote:

> > Somehow, it seems like most of the major breakthroughs/advances in the
> > use of computers took place early on, i.e. word processing,
> > spreadsheets, and databases, and what has been taking place over the
> > past 15 - 20 years would fall more into a refinement catagory. We are
> > getting faster hardware, more ability (also known as bells and
> > whistles), but no major breakthroughs that open up a whole new field for
> > the use of computers. Am I missing something?
>
> "Recent" advances would be networking, GUIs, and object-oriented systems.
> Hmmm...all of these are early seventies Xerox innovations...
>
> A continuing series of advancements is occurring in fabrication
> technologies, perhaps with IBM leading the way (they have always been
> ahead of everyone else).

I took Marvin's query to be "What has made people want to go out and buy
this computer?" Right off the top of my head the stuff like Sony
Playstation and Nintendo 64 and other game machines in the last several
years fits this bill. When I saw what a Sony Playstation could do, I
went out and bought one that week. And incidentally, it brought about
$299 worth of entertainment (well, plus the $150 for the three games I
bought with it...was it $450 worth of entertainment? No, that's why I
stopped buying the overpriced games for it). Let's see, other than the
Internet, there's been no reason why someone has run out to a store and
plunked down good money for a computer. The Internet is probably the
biggest "killer app" that has caused computers to sell. That and DOOM.

Sam
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Computer Historian, Programmer, Musician, Philosopher, Athlete, Writer, Jackass
Received on Thu Jul 17 1997 - 19:53:47 BST