Computer Advances

From: Marvin <marvin_at_rain.org>
Date: Fri Jul 18 12:38:47 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,
>
> 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

You took it pretty much how I meant it. Except for speed, graphics, and
most importantly to "keep up with the Jones," there is no good technical
reason the classics we are talking about are not perfectly acceptable
for most applications. The internet has been mentioned as a major
advancement, and it is in the sense people might buy a computer just for
the e-mail capabilities. The FAX machine falls in that catagory. I
don't think voice recognition by itself would be a reason to get a
computer. <SIGH> I guess there would be a few other reasons not to use
the classics. 1) the lack of new software applications being written
and/or upgraded for the classic, 2) the lack of a standard platform to
transfer software between machines. I think THAT is probably the major
contribution of IBM to the widespread use of computers.
Received on Fri Jul 18 1997 - 12:38:47 BST