ST Aug 8, 2006
The personal computer turns 25
By Harold James
IN AUGUST 1981, IBM introduced the 5150 personal computer. It was
not really the first personal computer, but it turned out to be
'The Personal Computer', and it revolutionised not just business
life but also the way people thought about the world.
The 1981 PC was a break with IBM's previous business model,
according to which it did not sell computers but leased them. With
the 5150, IBM moved into mass production of a standardised
commodity using components produced by other companies. Big Blue
(as IBM is known) allowed other companies (notably the infant
Microsoft) to develop its software.
No good deed goes unpunished: By making the PC, IBM practically
destroyed itself as a company. Its innovation gave rise to a huge
number of new and dynamic companies, forcing IBM to reinvent itself
completely in order to compete with them - just one example of the
socially transformative effects of the PC.
Before 1981, visionaries who thought about the impact of technology
on society believed that the computer would allow a centralisation
of knowledge and power. This was the world of George Orwell's Big
Brother, the extrapolation of the 20th century's experience of
totalitarianism. Powerful computers led to potent states and
powerful and centrally directed business corporations.
The PC seemed at first to promise a restoration of the balance in
favour of the individual. Computing became decentralised, and the
new flexibility produced a sense that control was moving away from
big agglomerations of power - whether governments or companies. It
is not surprising that the triumph of the PC seemed to be
accompanied by a revival of the 19th-century vision of classical
liberalism and individualism.
The idea was that an individual could buy a computer and the
software needed for a specific (and increasingly complicated)
purpose, and immediately generate a productive result. Indeed,
within a few years, individuals would possess in a small machine as
much computing power as the mainframe IBM 360s that had
revolutionised centralised computing in the 1960s.
But this initial triumph of the PC (and very substantial sales in
the 1980s) did not immediately fulfil all the initial hopes for
individual empowerment and social transformation. It did not seem
to produce many efficiency gains, despite enormous investments in
information technology. Immense amounts of time were wasted in
enterprises by informal requests for assistance, forcing
knowledgeable workers to become computer gurus in order to aid
their colleagues.
The initial disappointment with electronic productivity was a vivid
demonstration of the limits of classical individualism. Only with
interconnection in the 1990s, above all through the Internet, did
the PC realise its potential. Suddenly, economists (especially in
the United States) began to measure substantial productivity
gains.
New forms of activity - Internet auctions, Internet encyclopaedias,
Internet chat rooms - reproduced over a much wider area the
interactions of individuals. Interlinked PCs really created a sense
of a vibrant social market. Individuals could realise themselves,
as in the old 19th-century model, but only to the extent that they
interacted with as many other people as possible. It was these
interactions, rather than the individual on his or her own, that
created value and set in motion a dynamic process.
The potential was alluring, but also terrifying. The linking of PCs
produced scares about the potential dangers of the new world.
People were afraid of malevolent computer viruses that would sweep
the world and destroy information and programmes in the space of a
few hours. There was widespread fear that dependence on computers
would produce a millennial catastrophe, as hospitals, airplanes,
power grids and communications would all grind to a halt when 1999
became 2000.
These traumas required responses very different from previous
technological changes. Government regulation was incapable of
dealing with the issues involved, although it was certainly helpful
to devise ways of making destructive hackers criminally
responsible. Nor would innovation by one company help.
A solution required generally collaborative efforts - of a sort
that corresponded to an ancient vision of civic republicanism
rather than the modern ideas of centralised power or isolated and
autonomous individuals.
Some observers believe that this interconnectivity has now, after a
quarter-century, made the PC obsolete. There are more specialised
applications of computing and information technology in smart
machines and mobile phones, whose defining characteristic is that
they communicate with one another.
But the alleged obsolescence of the PC is actually a sign of how
basic it has become to a new vision of society. We need to
celebrate, advertise and propagandise new innovations only when
their success is questionable, before they have become widely
accepted.
In the 18th century, cheap and washable cotton undergarments
produced a revolution in hygiene, but soon this had become so
commonplace that the cotton revolution no longer generated any
excitement.
The PC has become the modern equivalent of cotton: so basic has it
become to our lives that, despite the fact that around 200 million
PCs are sold each year, it now simply generates an electronic yawn.
But, like the cotton revolution, the true measure of the social and
political transformations wrought by the PC will become clear only
after a much longer time.
Harold James is Professor of History and International Affairs at
Princeton University and author of The Roman Predicament.
Copyright: Project Syndicate
BIG BLUE'S WOES
No good deed goes unpunished: By making the PC, IBM practically
destroyed itself as a company. 
