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

[Morlock Elloi <morlockelloi@gmail.com>]

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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