Too Soon to Tell: Essays for the End of the Computer Revolution

220 Pages·2009·2.954 MB·English

by  David Alan Grier(auth.)

Too Soon to Tell
Press Operating Committee
Chair
Linda Shafer
former Director, Software Quality Institute
The University of Texas at Austin
Editor-in-Chief
Alan Clements
Professor
University of Teesside
Board Members
David Anderson, Principal Lecturer, University of Portsmouth
Mark J. Christensen, Independent Consultant
James Conrad, Associate Professor, UNC Charlotte
Michael G. Hinchey, Director, Software Engineering Laboratory, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center
Phillip Laplante, Associate Professor Software Engineering, Penn State University
Richard Thayer, Professor Emeritus, California State University, Sacramento
Donald F. Shafer, Chief Technology Offi cer, Athens Group, Inc.
Evan Butterfi eld, Director of Products and Services
Kate Guillemette, Product Development Editor, CS Press
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Too Soon to Tell
Essays for the End of
the Computer Revolution
David Alan Grier
A John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Publication
Copyright © 2009 by IEEE Computer Society. All rights reserved.
Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey.
Published simultaneously in Canada.
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10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
This is a book for Dad
and if it is for him, it is also for Mom,
for Dad could not have played his role without her
just as I could not have written these words
without Jean
to whom this work is truly dedicated.
Contents
Preface: To Have Been Young in that Hour ix
Section I: The Computer Era (1946–1973)
Out of Position 3
Seymour Cray’s Cat 7
Songs of Comfort and Joy 11
Life on the Frontier 17
Museum Pieces 21
The Curve of Innovation 23
Public Image 29
The Enduring Myth of Hardware 31
Choosing Our Way 37
Friend of the Band 39
Family Portrait 43
Section II: The Age of Information (1974–1987)
Coming of Age 49
Riding with Bohannon 55
The Language of Bad Love 57
Common Knowledge 63
Confl ict-Free Memories 65
On the Right Side of the Road 71
Fork in the Path 77
The Best Deal in Town 83
Crossing the Divide 89
Auditions 95
Annie and the Boys 99
Mergers and Divestitures 107
Old Bottles 111
vii
viii Contents
Section III: The Days of Cyberspace: (1986–2007)
Alley Life 117
On the Camino Real 123
Dirty Electricity 129
Because We Were Different 135
A Winter of Hope and A Spring of Despair 141
Coming into the Country 147
Outposts 151
The Captured Imagination 157
Shutdown 161
Force of Nature 167
Ever Onward! Thanks for Asking! 173
Emailing from Armenia 177
The Boundaries of Time 183
Counting Beans 189
The Eyes of the World 195
The Lay of the Land 199
Circle of Light 203
Beyond the Horizon 205
Epilogue: Indicator Lamps 209
Disclaimers, References and Notes 213
Index 235
Preface
To Have Been Young
in that Hour
R
EVOLUTIONS ALWAYS END WITH A PRESS STATEMENT. They may
have started with slogans and protests and rioters in the street but they end with a
single piece of paper that is marked “ For Immediate Release. ” The words vary from
case to case. Sometimes they suggest heroic action by selfl ess revolutionaries.
Sometimes they state quietly but powerfully that order is restored and that the citi-
zenry can return to their normal activities. In more than a few situations, they conceal
with twisted and awkward prose the fact that the revolutionaries are not fully in
control.
The computer revolution began in the heat of a global war, when the world ’ s
industrialized nations were devoting their energy and treasure to the manufacture of
weaponry to be used against each other. In that hour, a small cadre of engineers and
mathematicians tried to exploit the benefi ts of industrialized computation, of using
machinery to do error - free calculation, hour after hour. Their new weapons demanded
such computations. They needed numbers to aim guns, to navigate aircraft, to spy
on the enemy over the horizon, and to warn friends of danger.
Until the last year of the war, the computer revolutionaries lived and worked in
isolated clusters and were only vaguely aware of each other ’ s existence. Their
numbers included a lone German inventor who was toiling in isolation beyond the
western front, an irascible physics professor who had an epiphany in an Illinois bar,
the corporate researcher who built a test machine on his kitchen table, a staff of code
breakers working on the grounds of an English estate, the young professor at a
woman ’ s college who joined the effort when she was called to war, and the com-
mittee of fi ve which caught a vision in a moment and then forever squabbled over
who had seen it fi rst.
The partisans of automatic calculation — the term “ computer ” had yet to be
applied to the new machines — held their fi rst conclave in the months that followed
the cessation of hostilities. They gathered in the city of Cambridge, Massachusetts,
to share their experiences, talk of battles won and lost, and to prepare for the future.
“ During the recent war there was tremendous development of certain types of com-
puting devices, ” recorded one member of this group. “ Electronic devices have been
constructed or are under development, which promise astronomical speeds for
numerical processes. ”
ix
x Preface
Beyond a small cadre of workers, few people were moved by the prospect of
“ astronomical speed ” and fewer still by “ numerical processes. ” If the promise of
their work was to be fulfi lled, these few would need to convince others of the benefi ts
that might be found in automatic calculation. In the months to come, their movement
would need to recruit more leaders, more laborers, offi ces, and laboratories. They
would have to fi nd funds to support their work and institutions to decide how those
funds should be spent.
At best, those early computer revolutionaries had only a few resources beyond
their grand vision for electronic computation. National governments had funded the
technology during the confl ict, but with the end of the war, they were reducing their
support for research and development. Yet, from this position, the revolutionaries
would create a movement that would march around the world in six decades. Its
progress was not always uniform, but its true setbacks were few. One generation of
leaders passed away only to be replaced by another, fortunes rose and fell, new ideas
were embraced in one season only to be cast away in the next. So the story ran until
the computer had found its way into every corner of modern life and had left nothing
new under the sun.
No revolution likes to admit that its days are past, that its infl uence is waning.
The aged Bolsheviks cling to the notion that they are important to the world and
that their ideas are relevant to the state of the world even when they are presented
with evidence to the contrary. They emphasize the work that remains to be done
even as they place the original revolutionaries in the little niches of the movement ’ s
pantheon. Yet, from time to time, some branch of the revolution will release a notice
to the press with a confession that the days of glory are past.
Such an announcement can be found in the summer of 2005, the year before
the computer industry was preparing to celebrate the 60 th anniversary of their revolu-
tion. In that summer, a small trade association, one of minor consequence in this
digital age, quietly reprinted a press release, stating that the residents of the earth
possessed 820 million operating personal computers and that that number was “ pro-
jected to top 1 billion in 2007. ”
With this simple announcement, the computer revolution came to an end. A
technology that is in the hands of one out of every seven residents of the planet can
no longer be considered new, or novel, or revolutionary. Personal computers have
permeated almost every aspect of modern life. They are used to monitor, control,
and govern much of the world ’ s economic and social activity. In six short decades,
they have fulfi lled the hopes of those men and women who met after the second
world war to plot the path of their revolution.
IN THAT FALL OF 1945, the world could claim no more than twelve operational
computers, though few of these would meet the modern defi nition that includes a
processor, memory, and stored program of instructions. The largest concentration
of these machines was to be found on the eastern shore of the United States, but
examples could also be found in England and even in Germany. The number of
revolutionaries was also small. Perhaps a hundred people could claim to have
worked with one of the new calculators. They were found not in the streets and
Preface xi
garrets of the country but in the centers of political, economic, and educational
power. Military centers. Ivy League laboratories. Wall Street offi ces.
Beyond those few technological centers could be found the men and women
who would bring life to the computer revolution. The engineer in Burma. The phi-
losopher in Brussels. The clerk in London. They would design the fi rst commercial
machines, expand the market for computers, write the fi rst large - scale programs.
Among that group of future revolutionaries was my father, Thomas Stewart
Grier, who was serving as a map clerk for the armies that had landed at Normandy
and marched across France. Like most of the soldiers in Europe and the Pacifi c the-
atres, he was looking towards the future but he wanted no radical change in society.
In common with so many in the war, he had witnessed the hardships of the Great
Depression and the violence of the war. He wanted nothing more than a time of
peace, a good job, and a quiet place to raise a family. He had an engineering degree
to fi nish and he hoped that he might fi nd a place in the fi eld that had inspired him
to pursue a technical career: the aircraft industry.
A decade would pass before my father stood in an aircraft factory and when
that day came, the factory no longer made airplanes. Located in St. Paul, Minnesota,
it held the offi ces of the Univac division of the Sperry Rand Corporation, one of the
early computer manufacturers. Dad entered that building with seventeen other new
Univac employees. Most were veterans of the war. One was a woman. All were
pleased with their prospects.
Dad had learned about computers slowly. “ I read about computers in the news-
paper, ” he used to say. “ Sometime after the war, I learned about a machine that some
people called an ‘ electronic brain, ’ and I thought that it might be a good tool
for business. ” He eventually became intrigued with the idea of working in a new
industry, a fi eld that was still not fully developed. Drawing on his childhood in the
American West, he would occasionally compare the state of the early computer indus-
try to the experience of the fi rst pioneers to Colorado, Nebraska and Wyoming. “ It was
a new frontier, ” he said, “ and I thought it might have a place for me. ”
The frontier, the idea of beginning one ’ s life again in a new place, exerts a
strong infl uence over the American imagination. “ American social development has
been continually beginning over again on the frontier, ” wrote the historian Frederick
Jackson Turner. This “ fl uidity of American life, ” he observed, “ this expansion west-
ward — with its few opportunities, its continuous touch with the simplicity of primi-
tive society, furnish the forces dominating American character. ”
In common with his ancestors who had moved to Wyoming, Dad wanted to join
the computer industry in order to fi nd new opportunity. At the time, no one quite
knew how these machines could be used in businesses, in government offi ces, in
schools, or in the home. But just as the settlers of the West had adapted existing
civic and business institutions to the new area, the pioneers of the computer age
would also rebuild institutions to take advantage of the new technology. Business
would have to become more fl exible, governments more far reaching, schools more
comprehensive.
My father not only found a place in the computer industry but he was one of
those dedicated workers who helped bring that technology to the world. At the time