more on Twenty five years of the IBM PC

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: "Tim O'Reilly" <tim () oreilly com>
Date: August 11, 2006 4:12:45 PM EDT
To: dave () farber net
Cc: ip () v2 listbox com
Subject: Re: [IP] more on Twenty five years of the IBM PC


On Aug 11, 2006, Jim Delong wrote:
> The IBM PCmay have made business history, but it did not make
> technological history.

Hmmm.  That seems like a very narrow view of technological history, a  
bit like saying that the open source movement didn't make  
technological history, because after all, source sharing goes back to  
the very early days of the computer.

The technology innovation of the PC, it seems to me, was the  
widespread introduction of the idea of a standard computer  
architecture, built entirely from off-the-shelf parts, with cloning  
actually encouraged because the specifications were published.  Just  
because there were other micro-computers doesn't mean that anyone had  
actually put together all the pieces that enabled the PC revolution.

As I've argued in an essay about open source entitled <a href=http:// 
tim.oreilly.com/articles/paradigmshift_0504.html>The Open Source  
Paradigm Shift</a>, which draws heavily on the history of the IBM PC  
for models and inspiration, commodification and standardization are  
in fact tremendous spurs to innovation, as they require value to be  
added in new ways, according to what Clayton Christenson has dubbed  
"the law of conservation of attractive profits."
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Tim O'Reilly, Founder & CEO, O'Reilly Media,
1005 Gravenstein Highway N., Sebastopol, CA 95472
+1-707-827-7150 http://tim.oreilly.com






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