IBM claims days are numbered for PC systems
by Steven Mostyn - Aug 12 2011, 07:50
Them were the days. Image: IBM.
As computer pioneer IBM celebrates the thirtieth anniversary of its revolutionary 5150 platform, one of the influential system’s core creators has said the future looks bleak for computer hardware as we know it.
Speaking via a blog post, Dr. Mark Dean offered that PCs are “no longer at the leading edge of computing,” and are likely to become as obsolete as the typewriter, vinyl records, cathode ray tube televisions and incandescent light bulbs.
However, although bell-curve touch-screen portables are currently changing the face of consumer technology, Dr. Dean believes the social connectivity attributed to such devices is powering a wealth of ideas and helping to shape the future.
“PCs are being replaced at the center of computing not by another type of device—though there’s plenty of excitement about smartphones and tablets—but by new ideas about the role that computing can play in progress,” commented Dr. Dean.
“These days, it’s becoming clear that innovation flourishes best not on devices but in the social spaces between them, where people and ideas meet and interact,” he added. “It is there that computing can have the most powerful impact on economy, society and people’s lives.”
The IBM 5150, which emerged as a landmark offering in computer evolution, was launched on August 12, 1981.
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