The following is an excerpt from “Burden’s Wheel,” the first chapter of The Big Switch: Rewiring the World, from Edison to Google, which is being published today by W. W. Norton & Company.
“At a conference in Paris during the summer of 2004, Apple introduced an updated version of its popular iMac computer. Since its debut in 1998, the iMac had always been distinguished by its unusual design, but the new model was particularly striking. It appeared to be nothing more than a flat-panel television, a rectangular screen encased in a thin block of white plastic and mounted on an aluminum pedestal. All the components of the computer itself – the chips, the drives, the cables, the connectors – were hidden behind the screen. The advertising tagline wittily anticipated the response of prospective buyers: ‘Where did the computer go?’
But the question was more than just a cute promotional pitch. It was, as well, a subtle acknowledgment that our longstanding idea of a computer is obsolete. While most of us continue to depend on personal computers both at home and in the office, we’re using them in a very different way than we used to. Instead of relying on data and software that reside inside our computers, inscribed on our private hard drives, we increasingly tap into data and software that stream through the public Internet. Our PCs are turning into terminals that draw most of their power and usefulness not from what’s inside them but from the network they’re hooked up to – and, in particular, from the other computers that are hooked up to that network.
The change in the way we use computers didn’t happen overnight. Primitive forms of centralized computing have been around for a long time. In the mid-1980s, many early PC owners bought modems to connect their computers over phone lines to central databases like Compuserve, Prodigy, and the Well – commonly known as ‘bulletin boards’ – where they exchanged messages with other subscribers. America Online popularized this kind of online community, greatly expanding its appeal by adding colorful graphics as well as chat rooms, games, weather reports, magazine and newspaper articles, and many other services. Other, more specialized databases were also available to scholars, engineers, librarians, military planners, and business analysts. When, in 1990, Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web, he set the stage for the replacement of all those private online data stores with one vast public one. The Web popularized the Internet, turning it into a global bazaar for sharing digital information. And once easy-to-use browsers like Netscape Navigator and Internet Explorer became widely available in the mid-1990s, we all went online in droves.”
Read more at roughtype.com
