The early 80’s was an exciting time…
I just finished watching Pirates of Silicon Valley again. I saw this made for TV movie back in 1999 when it came out, but I have been doing a lot of reading about the making of the original Macintosh lately and I wanted to rewatch the video to see if I get a different perspective. Pirates of Silicon Valley is about the startup of Apple Computers and Microsoft. For the computer hackers and visionaries of the day, that was an exciting time period. Personal computing as we know it simply did not exist at the time — the companies headed by Steve Jobs and Bill Gates molded the personal computer into their own visions.
In retrospective, it was truly a great time for the computer hobbyist. A personal computer was something that one could create at home and have it be completely unique and yet at least as powerful as any of the other personal computers of the time. In the present day, computer hardware is so complicated that the hobbyist has to cross a significant barrier of entry for creating anything new and different The software world is the new frontier of the computing arena — hence, the dot-com boom of the late Nineties was born.
Sometimes I wonder what the next big thing on the horizon will be. Is it ubiquitous computing, computers that are so commonplace that we do not even realize that we are using them? Computers trends are leaning towards that direction, from computers the size of a room to computers the size of a handheld notebook. Is it some new form of user interface, augmenting the graphical and command line interfaces? Work is being done towards an auditory interface using technology like voice recognition and voice synthesis. Where can the hobbyists of today work to make an impact in the computing platforms of tomorrow?
These questions seem to stay in my mind more and more these days as I try to figure out what I really want to be doing with my life. Currently, I am very interested in programming language theory and in operating system design but neither of these interests are very revolutionary. Am I just not visionary? Does this mean that I just do not have what it takes to change the world? In the movie, Bill Gates says something like you have to figure out what someone needs, but does not realize that he needs, and then sell it to them. Are the ideas really so visionary or is it just being in the right place at the right time?