Farewell, PC – What’s Next? | Imagining the Internet

Farewell, PC – What’s Next?

IBM and Apple hope their alliance will give both companies the resources to lead in the new workstation and information-appliance markets … Is the future simply arriving too quickly for the alliance? The very size of the organizations and the historical baggage they tote may make timely responses impossible. And other more agile computer companies are already working to create new workstation tools while the consumer electronics industry holds a lead in building information appliances.

Teledemocracy: For Better or Worse

Computers enable people to be active participants in debate, rather than passive observers; this can breed a sense of engagement in place of alienation, advocates contend. Because electronic debates are conducted in writing, they can be more substantive than face-to-face confrontations. “Today’s issues are too complex for oral debate.”

Farewell, PC – What’s Next?

Today’s personal computers are headed for technological oblivion because they are fundamentally stand-alone devices designed to accommodate a wide range of tasks at the expense of doing any one particularly well.

Farewell, PC – What’s Next?

The next revolution will be shaped by new communications-rich workstations on our desktops and “information appliances” – inexpensive, portable high-performance information tools that will emerge from the collision of the computer and consumer electronics industries. Unlike PCs, these devices will be specialized tools for everyday tasks from calendar-keeping to communications. None will look remotely like a PC, and all will be cheap to the point of near-disposability.

Chapter Two: Postmodern Virtualities

Participation in the information superhighway and virtual reality will most likely be accessible to and culturally consonant with wealthy, white males. In these respects the media reflect the relations of force that prevail in the wider community.

Farewell, PC – What’s Next?

The future of computing lies in the development of new systems as radically different from today’s offerings as the original PCs differed from their predecessors. The personal computer may turn out to be like the horseless carriage, whose effect on our expectations was greater than its impact on our lives. PC users daydreamed of electronic cottages and global villages but settled for word processors and spreadsheets instead.

Digest of the First USENIX Workshop on Electronic Commerce (EC 95)

The impact of electronic commerce in the short term will be to cut costs, shrink development cycles, and streamline procurement. The long-term outlook is the atomization, or dis-integration, of vertical companies into ones offering core competencies in niche areas, outsourcing the rest. This will empower small businesses, niche publishing, and tiny markets and will lead to new information services, such as risk management and brokers to bring buyers and sellers together.

Private Life in Cyberspace

The society we erect [in cyberspace] will probably be quite different from the one we now inhabit, given the fact that this one depends heavily on the physical property of things while the next one has no physical properties at all. Certain qualities should survive the transfer, however, and these include tolerance, respect for privacy of others, and a willingness to the treat one’s fellows as something besides potential customers.

Chapter Two: Postmodern Virtualities

Stories and their performance consolidate the “social bond” of the Internet “community,” much like the premodern narrative … The technology encourages a lightening of the weight of the referent. This is an important basis for the instability of identity in electronic communications, leading to the insertion of the question of the subject and its construction.