PCWeek on the Influence of the PC and the Internet

tmlrv writes " PCWeek has a series of articles on how the PC and the Internet have affected modern computing. Noting the source, its not really surprising the articles are PC centric (PC, as in IBM/compatible Personal Computer) and gives way too much credit to the PC for the spread of the Internet. But what I found interesting was that the part UNIX played and its importance is not even mentioned with the implication that the Internet was a totally PC driven phenomena. "

Comments

What if the PC never happened?

[apsmith]

What I thought was most interesting was the page wondering What if the PC had never happened? -- a quote:

With the earlier emergence of "just turn it on" devices, such as the
Palm PDA from 3Com Corp.'s Palm Computing Division or Sun
Microsystems Inc.'s SunRay thin client, we might have avoided vast
investments in training users to administer PC operating systems.
Entire software subindustries-such as multitasking shells and system
management utilities-might never have come to pass. Enterprise IT
managers would have been able to concentrate on business process
improvement instead of being bogged down in end-user
handholding.

and they attribute the reason this didn't happen to AT&T's not taking packet switching seriously enough. An interesting thought. T1 circuits have worked over regular copper for a long time now - on the other hand, I don't think routers and switches were up to the capacity demands that would have been needed to do anything close to an adequate job 20 years ago. But it's definitely an interesting thought.

Re:What if the PC never happened?

[nojomofo]

With the earlier emergence of "just turn it on" devices, such as the Palm PDA from 3Com Corp.'s Palm Computing Division or Sun Microsystems Inc.'s SunRay thin client, we might have avoided vast investments in training users to administer PC operating systems

Uhhhh.... It's pretty silly to think that these devices might have been created without 20+ years of r+d put into developing PCs. Really, does anybody think that hardware companies were going to put 20 years of effort into developing these things without producing a product and without a specific goal???? It's like saying "Gee, we could have saved a lot of resources if we had just created electric cars to begin with at the beginning of the century", isn't it?

The internet _is_ a PC driven phenomenon

[Kenneth Stephen]

I definitely agree that most of the internet runs on UNIX. But the reason for the popularity of the internet, and the equipment used to run it are two different things. Just consider that the internet has been around for nearly three decades. The only people using it then were in the R&D establishments and academia. And this did not constitute much of a user-base and therefore, things like online shopping wouldnt really have clicked (pardon the pun).

With the advent of the PC and PC-based internet clients, however, the user base changed significantly. The user base of the internet today has become almost synonymous with the user-base of PC's. The huge PC revolution thus is directly responsible for the huge expansion in the popularity of the internet.

Let me see...

[jd]

Yep, another list. :)

1. I remember accessing the Internet on my trusty BBC model B. If anyone here knows of a PC of comparable age, speak now or forever hold your peace.
2. Unix has done more for the Internet than merely work in the background (although it's done a lot of that). Without Unix connecting college and University kids, where do you think the programmers would have come from? Coders don't grow on trees.
3. What's the betting look like that Bill Gates did NOT invent the ARPAnet, or sell any OS' to operate on it?
4. e-Commerce existed before the PC. People used to buy/sell off Bulletin Boards, or over the International Packet Switch-Stream system all the time.
5. If the Internet is the WWW, then the Internet is Unix. (CERN and NCSA didn't exactly run on Windows 3.11!)
6. Name the TCP/IP driver that was supplied with Windows 3.11.
7. Yes, a PC magazine writing about the PC influence might be forgiven for focussing on PC's, but not if they don't either -state- that they're only talking about the part PC's played, OR give some kind of summary of the other systems involved. Emphasis is one thing. Negligence and misleading or false information are something else altogether. And it ain't bagels with cream cheese.
8. FIDO did as much as the entire early e-mail system did, if not more.
9. TBBS was a lot more powerful than the entire Internet Service system that comes with NT 4.0. It was also a lot faster, cheaper and more flexible.
10. Essex MUD (MUD-1) did more for the Internet revolution than any single web-site (bar Slashdot and Freshmeat). And it didn't exactly run on a PC, either. (Unless DEC-10's count.)

Nope

[Zico]

What you're attributing to him is his explanation after everyone started to ridicule him. His original quote was, "I took the initiative in creating the Internet." What you're saying was his equivalent of "Well, of course I never meant that I invented the internet, this is what I really meant," followed by the appropriate amount of weaselly BS. The funny thing was listening to his aides originally standing by his original quote until the laughter got too loud and they switched to the "that's not what he meant" tack.

Just curious, not a flame, but why were you so adamant about your explanation? If you were aware of his subsequent explanation (because you did get that part right), I'm surprised that you didn't know what he originally said.

Cheers,
ZicoKnows@hotmail.com

Re:He who writes the history books...

[Anonymous Coward]

From http://www.yip.org/hacking.html:

Internet®: (1) A network of computers established by the US military at the beginning of the Cold War, with the hope that in the event of nuclear war, members of the military could continue to view porn, play Quake and trade tips on how to make money quickly. (2) That icon on Windows 95 that takes you to the Dilbert page.

Microsoft: The company that invented the Internet in 1995.

Netscape: The company that invented the Internet in 1992.

I hope that clears everything up for everyone.

A letter from Poland

[jedrek]

As a Pole who grew up in America and returned just for the '89 elections I can certianly testify to this. The internet and digital communication (mostly modems) had no effect on the fall of communisim if only because they DID NOT EXIST in those countries. Poland had a handful of internet access points before '89, the onlything digital comming out of here was Donosy, an underground 'newspaper' for Poles in America.

Underground nformation was passed on during those times by small printing presses, articles were carbon copied on typewriters, there was no information age to speak of, no modems to send files! Maybe one in fifty people had a phone line, not to mention that most of those phone lines couldn't hold a 150baud connection.

The information age hit Poland hard. Tens of thousands of companies had to be computerized, the state telephony put millions of dollars into the telecomm infrastructure (which is still underinvested). At this moment there is an information boom in Poland similar to that of the boom in the US at the begining of the nineties, but back in '89 there was nothing.

jay

electricity responsible for internet

[BagMan2]

Giving PC's or Unix credit for the internet is silly. Why don't we just give electricity credit for it, after all, without electricity there would be no internet. The point is, that the what the internet has become is far more than the sum of it's hardware. It would be like giving the television-tube credit for Jerry Seinfeld episodes.