From Pessimists Archive, May 6:
In March 1976 Apple Co-Founder Steve Wozniak presented a circuit board design for a home PC at the now legendary ‘Homebrew Computer Club’ - a meeting of early personal computing pioneers.
Often forgotten in this Silicon Valley legend was the doubt one of the Steve’s (Steve Wozniak) cast on the very idea of personal computing, just as the companies magnum opus - the Macintosh - had been released to the world.
In a 1985 interview Wozniak posited: “The home computer may be going the way of video games, which are a dying fad” - alluding to the 1983 crash in the video game market. Wozniak continued:
“for most personal tasks, such as balancing a check book, consulting airline schedules, writing a modest number of letters, paper works just as well as a computer, and costs less.”
Even in the realm of education Wozniak doubted the value of computers, saying that after leaving Apple and enrolling in college: "
I spent all my time using the computer, not learning the subject I was supposed to learn. I was just as efficient when I used a typewriter."
He seemed well aware of the heretical nature of his statements, telling a reporter: “Nobody at Apple is going to like hearing this, but as a general device for everyone, computers have been oversold” and that “Steve Jobs is going to kill me when he hears that.”
Many of his critiques were not uncommon: the same year The New York Times ran a story titled 'Home Computer is Out in the Cold' exploring the failed promise of computers becoming as ubiquitous as television and dishwashers in the home. In the piece Silicon Valley luminary Esther Dyson joked “What the world needs is a home computer that does windows” - she meant housework, not the operating system that would launch 8-months later....
....MUCH MORE
