[Vision2020] Steve Jobs

[Kenneth Marcy]

On Thursday, October 06, 2011 07:38:34 AM Paul Rumelhart wrote:
> I'm saddened to see one of the true visionaries that helped bring
> desktop computing to the masses pass away.

Indeed.

> I don't generally use Apple products, though I do own an iPod shuffle.
> The last Apple computer I used I think was the Apple IIc (or was it a
> IIe?) that was, iirc, in the foyer of the Principal's office in the
> Junior High when I was going to school here.  Maybe it was at the High
> School.  It's been too long ago.

There have always been reasons to use alternatives to Apple computers -- lower 
prices, higher performance, more software diversity and availability, and the 
greater likelihood of a left-brain preference among the user community. On the 
other hand, there are reasons Apple users persist with those products -- 
simpler processor architecture and development environment, more consistent 
integration of peripherals with core hardware, and a better integration of 
software and hardware behind a more consistent, less complicated, user 
interface. Because of these characteristics combined, the ability to 
accomplish some tasks, such as, early in Macintosh's lifetime, desktop 
publishing, and later on, a variety of musical tasks, has made Apple computers 
the sine qua non for creative right-brain types all over the world.

> Anyway, without the early entrepreneurs like Jobs, we wouldn't be where
> we are today.  The world of computing could have taken a different turn,
> and been much more closed and distant.  Think massive mainframes and
> public computer terminals.

Various speculative alternate histories may be interesting, but are useful to 
the extent they assist with understanding our reality and future possible 
alternatives we can effect. For example, the personal computing world might 
have been quite different if IBM had chosen to use the 16-bit Motorola 68000 as 
the main processor in their first personal computer, but it would have been a 
more expensive product than it already was with 8-bit Intel-based components. 
Interestingly, a company called Fortune Systems Corporation marketed their 
Fortune 32:16 system, a product technically superior to IBM's PCs, XTs, and 
ATs of the same years, but the pricing of the 32:16 kept its sales volumes low 
and thus did not allow Fortune the success its technologies deserved.

http://www.old-computers.com/museum/computer.asp?c=767 

As far as "massive mainframes and public computer terminals" are concerned, 
the megalithic monopolists still want to drive the public toward such 
solutions that they can control as their cash cathedrals. Now they call it 
cloud computing with hand-held client devices, but the analogy with mindless 
surrender of personal control over personal computation resources to corporate 
control is just as Orwellian today as it was in the days when DEC's Ken Olson 
could not understand why anyone would want or need a computer at home.

> He was also involved in Lucasfilms and Pixar, and anyone connected to
> Pixar rocks in my book.

Today the computer gaming industry is larger than the movie business. It may 
well be that mindless multi-player gaming over Internet connections will be 
the collective activity that leads to the economic conditions that result in 
shifting control of increasingly necessary personal computing resources from 
individual persons to business Borgs boasting binary billions' bigness.

More stories of the intersections of the rights of Winston Smith and the 
influences of Agent Anderson await us all.


Ken