That Would Be An F

Sorry – can’t recall the source for these – let me know if you know ….

Strictly Accurate :

“Computers in the future may weigh no more than 1.5 tons.”- Popular Mechanics, 1949

“Indeed, it would not be an exaggeration to describe the history of the computer industry for the past decade as a massive effort to keep up with Apple.”
- Byte, December 1994 (in fact they still are …)

Just Wrong :

“I think there is a world market for maybe five computers.”
– Thomas Watson, chairman of IBM, 1943

“I have travelled the length and breadth of this country and talked with the best people, and I can assure you that data processings is a fad that won’t last out the year.”
- The editor in charge of business books for Prentice-Hall, 1957

“There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home.”
- Ken Olson, president, chairman and founder of DEC

Valid Question At The Time :

“But what…is it good for?”
- Engineer at the Advanced Computing Systems Division of IBM, 1968, commenting on the microchip

And To Finish :

“So we went to Atari and said, ‘Hey, we’ve got this amazing thing, even built with some of your parts, and what do you think about funding us? Or we’ll give it to you. We just want to do it. Pay our salary, we’ll come work for you.’ And they said, ‘No.’

So then we went to Hewlett-Packard, and they said, ‘Hey, we don’t need you. You haven’t got through college yet.’”

Steve Jobs, cofounder of Apple Computer

A thread caught my eye in Facebook just now – so thought it was time to publish one of my favorite extracts from Mr. Adams work …. it eventually examines scale – and potential confusion if you don’t get it right.

It is of course well known that careless talk costs lives, but the full scale of the problem is not always appreciated.

For instance, at the very moment that Arthur said, “I seem to be having tremendous difficulty with my life-style,” a freak wormhole  opened up in the fabric of the space-time continuum and carried his words far far back in time across almost infinite reaches of space to a distant Galaxy where strange and warlike beings were poised on the brink of frightful interstellar battle.

The two opposing leaders were meeting for the last time.

A dreadful silence fell across the conference table as the commander of the Vl’hurgs, resplendent in his black jeweled battle shorts, gazed levelly at the G’Gugvuntt leader squatting opposite him in a cloud of green sweet-smelling steam, and, with a million sleek and horribly beweaponed star cruisers poised to unleash electric death at his single word of command, challenged the vile creature to take back what it had said about his mother.

The creature stirred in his sickly broiling vapor, and at that very moment the words I seem to be having tremendous difficulty with my life-style drifted across the conference table.

Unfortunately, in the Vl’hurg tongue this was the most dreadful insult imaginable, and there was nothing for it but to wage terrible war for centuries.

Eventually, of course, after their Galaxy had been decimated over a few thousand years, it was realized that the whole thing had been a ghastly mistake, and so the two opposing battle fleets settled their few remaining differences in order to launch a joint attack on our own Galaxy — now positively identified as the source of the offending remark.

For thousands more years, the mighty ships tore across the empty wastes of space and finally dived screaming on to the first planet they came  cross — which happened to be the Earth — where due to a terrible miscalculation of scale the entire battle fleet was accidentally swallowed by a small dog.

Those who study the complex interplay of cause and effect in the history of the Universe say that this sort of thing is going on all the time, but that we are powerless to prevent it.

“It’s just life,” they say.

Passed on – with thanks to :: American Buddha Online Library