Morlock Elloi on Tue, 5 Mar 2019 18:11:42 +0100 (CET)


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Re: <nettime> Cyberpunks who were right about everything, but so what

This began when IBM started selling "personal computers" (PC XT, AT). They were pitched to the mainframe customers as a way of liberation from the evil data centers and their high priests, the operators. It was immensely successful, the playbook IBM sales used was nearly perfect. They sought to bypass the data center people and deal directly with the users (this was the first time the term was used), pitching them against the data center staff. This was intentional, as it was giving direct power back to IBM. The data center staff looked at dismay at the bs being served to the "users", but no one listened to them. They were so 60s and 70s.
There were innumerable texts praising the 'liberation' - which actually was enslavement from the outside megacorp, without your own professional staff to defend you. It's interesting to look at the articles and imagery from those times - they defined and predicated almost everything that's going on today, especially the indoctrination, but it wasn't polished, so the ideology shows through the cracks. 

Take a look:

https://archive.org/search.php?query=collection%3Abyte-magazine&sort=-publicdate&&and[]=year%3A%221982%22&and[]=year%3A%221981%22&and[]=year%3A%221980%22
For example, in https://ia802509.us.archive.org/2/items/BYTE_Vol_07-05_1982-05_Japanese_Computers/BYTE%20Vol%2007-05%201982-05%20Japanese%20Computers.pdf 


The "Master Plan"

Of potentially greatest significance in Japan's computer fortunes is
the ten-year plan for national computer policy announced last fall by
the Japanese Information Processing Development Center QIPDEC) ,
whereby Japanese computer companies would jointly develop a  grandiose
fifth-generation computer system on several different levels, relying
on sophisticated artificial-intelligence research into natural
languages and graphics.
Or in https://ia600308.us.archive.org/10/items/byte-magazine-1980-06/1980_06_BYTE_05-06_Inter_Computer_Communications.pdf 


"Computerized conferences [are] a new form of human communication
utilizing the computer. We believe that it will eventually be as
omnipresent as the telephone and as revolu­ tionary, in terms of
facilitating the growth and emergence of vast networks of
geographically dispersed persons who are nevertheless able to work and
communicate with one another at no greater cost than if they were
located a few blocks from one another."




On 3/5/19, 02:26, Joseph Rabie wrote:

We look upon computing as ubiquitous and all-encompassing, which of course it is.

But this was preceded by the mainframe, very big, very rare, with the authority of science and its priesthood of programmers. Each unit confined to a building all of its own. More representative of bureaucratic institutional control than capital, which came later.

In the sixties mainframes were decried as a major symbol of the modern, dystopic state.

Relative to which personal computers (coming in the wake of the Whole Earth "ecology") were seen as a force of liberation. As Apple said, "Think Different!" -- which as corporate utopist propaganda might even have been half sincere, at a time when Microsoft was the devil incarnate.

Today, Microsoft passes as a benign (?) grandfather and Apple says "Think Apple!"


Joe.


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