Plus çà change...
October 4, 2000
The rest of the English expression amounts to a shrug, a
Gallic one perhaps -- things never really change, same old
stories keep going around. When it comes to this emerging
class of connected devices, Internet Appliances, it is natural to
start from the known in exploring the unfamiliar. And, once
ensconced in the comfort of familiar frames of reference, why
not recycle the old stories? There are enough to go
around -- just pick the ones that suit your line.
It's yet another avatar of Larry's old NC tales, what Microsoft and
Intel have been advocating, the Simple PC, the NetPC, the Zero
Administration PC. Yes, we've been promised simple PCs that
would just work for a while, and it's tempting to see Net
Appliances as the deliverable -- or the deliverance. Or there's
Sun's karmic effort to sell the network as the computer, open
systems, X-Windows terminals, Java Stations.
So, yes, looking at these and a few others better forgotten, no wonder
skeptics and older males contend that things never change. We keep
hearing these stories, but the only connected device of any substance is
the PC. Everything else is a bunch of recycled old tales with one thing in
common: PC envy.
Perhaps. One look at the facts might point at one important difference,
the glare, the magnifying glass, the size, ego or otherwise, of people and
entities involved, the magnitude of financial bets of several kinds.
When PCs got started, they were made by geeks for geeks. No investment
bankers involved, Microsoft was the Bill Gates on a New Mexico DMV picture
and the players were Ohio Scientific, Cromemco, MITS, Altos, and
Commodore. Apple, IBM, and Compaq hadn't entered the scene yet. No
industry conferences. One pulp rag, Creative Computing, one magazine with
software on a flexible 45 rpm record insert, Byte. How much geekier can
you get?
I could go on, but I'm probably belaboring the point already. Chances are
slim that history will repeat itself. Because with appliances, the more
things change, the more they keep changing. For one thing, we don't know
yet where the leaders will come from: the PC industry, the consumer
electronics industry, makers of PDAs, classical phone companies, huge ISPs,
smaller ISPs, or wireless operators. We don't know who the next Jobs
and Wozniak will be or what will be the next Microsoft with WebTV and
Windows CE.
Do I have a bet? Yes. Many thought the technophobes would be
the early adopters of these appliances. At last, the technophobes
would say, something I can use instead of being used by it. My
bet -- in this, I agree with a respected PC-industry analyst, Michael
Slater-- is early adopters will be the technophiles. People who, by
character, are not afraid of the new, people who know PCs are too
complicated for much of what it takes to enjoy the Web. Of course,
in writing this, I realize I contradict myself. In this technophile, early
adopter respect, history repeats itself. Still, if the character of early
adopters is a constant, the identity of the next generation of leaders
in the world of connected devices is far from a guaranteed clone of
today's establishment.
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