noteworthy wrote:
] If I were an IBM board member, or anyone who cared about
] the long-term health of IBM or the US technology industry or
] the whole blooming US economy, I'd be unspeakably
] depressed.
]
] Know this for sure: Some company will build all this and more
] into a radically more powerful, radically simpler PC. Will it
] be an American company? Don't count on it.

I guess I violated the point of this blog by actually reading this article. Its silly. Everything this person asks for is software, which has nothing at all to do with selling PCs (and a lot of what this person asks for is incredibly naive).

There is little room for innovation in the PC market. These are standardized goods. Some companies are in it just because it generates a lot of revenue, at volume, but its not central to IBM's business. Its possible to make PCs poorly, and IBM does it well, but in their history they have tried several times to innovate in this market and they have failed consistently, because this market is about standardization and innovation makes you incompatible.

Outsourcing PC making to China is no more a threat to American competitiveness then the outsourcing of the manufacture of the components within, which has already moved to Asia.

The competitive markets in the PC world are media PCs, which are tied up by intellectual property issues and will most likely be dominated by consumer electronics firms, and mobile devices, which are also far removed from IBM's business. Both markets have significant American players, but neither is lead domestically.

A more significant threat to domestic leadership in technology comes from our technology adoption rate. Europeans and Japanese make good cellphones because people in those places buy them up more rapidly then we do. Japanese and Koreans are going to make more interesting internet media technologies because they have more bandwidth at home. On the other hand, we're going to do VOIP, because our vast country has a more immediate need for it.

On the whole, we're clearly going to pass the point where American know how gives us a technological edge. We're entering a period where the unique cultural identities of a nation impact the technologies they create. I don't think any one country is suited to dominate this. You can do some things with policy and funding to drive things, but only to an extent. Accidents of geography and perspective will have much greater effects.

Decius wrote:
] It's silly.
]
] Everything this person asks for is software, which has
] nothing at all to do with selling PCs (and a lot of what
] this person asks for is incredibly naive).

I think David Gelernter knows these things. I suppose he was trying to do the Vision thing. He is a computer scientist more than an engineer. As engineers we can't get past the details.

] There is little room for innovation in the PC market.

The very fact that this view prevails suggests that it is wrong.

You've attacked his examples without responding to his thesis, which is that televisions, airplanes, automobiles, and PCs "all were (or are) destined to take a lot longer than 25 years to reach maturity."

Your humbug statement becomes nothing more than a truism when you confine yourself to today's definition of "PC" and "PC market."

If you view the PC as an ecosystem, then hardware and software are much more closely intertwined than you've accepted. The primary data input device is based on the mechanical typewriter -- still! And while my IntelliMouse is now "optical" under the hood, it's still basically the same as Engelbart's original. Given this staid hardware landscape, it comes as no surprise that user interfaces are stagnant and 3D visual metaphors have not caught on.

The widespread availability of new hardware makes new kinds of software possible. What if I could sell a "value" desktop PC with 10 TB of disk space? What if I coupled it with unlimited online storage and a free, automatic, encrypted backup service? Ultimately, file system design is constrained by the block-structured nature of the hard disk drive.

] in their history they have tried several times to innovate
] in this market and they have failed consistently,
] because this market is about standardization and innovation
] makes you incompatible.

I really encourage everyone to read "Design Rules." (It has long been memed here.) You are definitely short-changing IBM on this.

Standardization of the computer was IBM's innovation. You owe the PC world as it exists today to IBM.

] The competitive markets in the PC world are media PCs, which
] will most likely be dominated by consumer electronics firms ...

These distinctions are arbitrary and American. The Chinese will not respect them. And they will win.

noteworthy wrote:
] The primary data input device is based on the mechanical
] typewriter -- still!

I don't expect this to change. I think people underestimate the typewriter.

] Given this staid hardware landscape, it comes as no surprise
] that user interfaces are stagnant and 3D visual metaphors
] have not caught on.

You can buy data gloves. At Fry's. They work regardless of the kind of PC that you have, using standard interfaces like USB. 3D has had trouble taking off even in the gaming world, where it is easy to make things that are compelling. I don't know why. The fact is that #d interfaces work best when they are immersive, and prolonged use of immersive interfaces causes health problems that are intractible.

] Ultimately, file system design is constrained by the
] block-structured nature of the hard disk drive.

But the hard disk drive is a component.

Whether we are talking about new screens, new input devices, new hard drives, new processors, or whatever, all of these things are components. Making a PC is essentially the task of integrating components. New components that are interesting build a market on their own long before they become integrated into off the shelf PCs. The difference between PCs and cars is that PCs provide standardized interfaces between components, and its trivial to replace on component with another. Its much easier to replace the case on your ATX system then it is to replace the body on your Model T. The result is that there is innovation in components and innovation in software that makes use of those components, but there is little innovation in the actual integration task.