Pioneers and Capitalists
June 30th, 2004 by Philip Loring2.4GHz Celeron. 80 GB hard disk. 17 inch SVGA monitor. 128 MB RAM. $400 from Dell.com
I remember sitting in my grandparents’ basement playing Zork on my NCR PC4I. That bad boy was a full-fledged IBM XT, sporting a zippy 8 Mhz processor, 16 MB of RAM and crisp 4-color graphics. I guarantee that computer did not cost $400.
There’s a computer in almost every home, school, and gas station. Indeed computer accessibility has come to such a level that they have even found a home in our telephones, cameras and refrigerators. Isn’t it wonderful to behold the promise of technology is coming true?
Wonderful, except for the fact that computers have found homes in our telephones, cameras and refrigerators. This proliferation is not itself a bad thing. A mobile phone is a much cooler tool than a home phone; a mobile phone with a built-in phone book is cooler still. A mobile phone with a built-in camera is, huh?
When something gets cheap, you start seeing it everywhere. If the manufacturer wants to maintain their marketing edge, they gotta add bling. Some new feature has to be added, and the ones that work the best are the features that appeal to our egos. Technology is getting cheap, have you seen the new webcams?
The creation of computers is a man made miracle. We actually built tools to help us reason, to help us solve problems. To do something beyond our physical limits like sequencing the human genome. Anyone who tells you they’re solving a problem by putting a computer in your refrigerator is lying… and lazy.
I’m ashamed of the many brilliant minds who are wasting their time designing cell phones and hand-held computers. The people who did the hard work before us were no less than pioneers. They were a counterculture devoted to bettering the world through the potentials of electric current. Most techies now collect big paychecks for catering to the whims of pop-culture.
