It’s time to say goodbye to the personal computer and make room in our hearts (and on our desks) for its successor, the impersonal computer. For the last 25 or so years, we’ve been confusing the machinery of computing with its use; we’ve viewed the personal computer as indistinguishable from personal computing. It wasn’t because we were wrong or misled. We had no choice. Because computing systems advanced more quickly than communications networks, the only way to make computing personal was to give everyone a dedicated computer, with their own microprocessor, their own hard drive, their own operating system and their own portfolio of software programs. “Personal computing” depended on, and was inseparable from, “personal computer.”<\/p>\n
But as networks and networking have advanced in recent years, it’s become possible to use computers more flexibly – to centralize computing assets and let users tap into them over a network, say, or to tie a bunch of computers together into a computing grid that can be shared. We can now have personal computing with impersonal computers. That will will lead to a much more productive and flexible use of information technology, with lower costs and fewer maintenance headaches, among other benefits. It will also end up giving individuals access to even greater computing resources than can be provided by a single PC.<\/p>\n
To get there, though, people will have to lose their sense of ownership over their machines. The biggest obstacle to the creation of computer grids, for example, is now as much attitudinal as technological. Individuals and, on a broader scale, corporate departments and business units don’t like the idea of sharing their machines with others. Take it from Wolfgang Gentzsch<\/a>, a former Sun engineer who heads a nonprofit that sets up grids for universities and government agencies: “People don’t want to share … it’s almost like we know how to handle the technology, but the cultural issues, that’s a big change.”<\/p>\n Get over it, folks. Computing should be personal. Computers shouldn’t.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" For a quarter century, we’ve been confusing “personal computing” with “personal computer.” It’s time to move on.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-31","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=31"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=31"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=31"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=31"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}