A reader pointed out to me this past week that the personal computer is well over 30 years old -- a number that has real consequence if you are familiar with my work. He remembered I predicted in 1992 that PCs as we knew them would be dead by now.

I was obviously a little off in my timing. But only a little off. PCs are still doomed and their end will come quicker than you think.

Not Dead Yet

Heres what I wrote in my bookAccidental Empiresin 1992:

It takes society thirty years, more or less, to absorb a new information technology into daily life. It took about that long to turn movable type into books in the fifteenth century. Telephones were invented in the 1870s but did not change our lives until the 1900s. Motion pictures were born in the 1890s but became an important industry in the 1920s. Television, invented in the mid-1920s, took until the mid-1950s to bind us to our sofas.

We can date the birth of the personal computer somewhere between the invention of the microprocessor in 1971 and the introduction of the Altair hobbyist computer in 1975. Either date puts us today (1992, remember) about halfway down the road to personal computers being a part of most peoples everyday lives, which should be consoling to those who cant understand what all the hullabaloo is about PCs. Dont worry; youll understand it in a few years, by which time theyll no longer be called PCs.

By the time that understanding is reached, and personal computers have wormed into all our lives to an extent far greater than they are today, the whole concept of personal computing will probably have changed. Thats the way it is with information technologies. It takes us quite a while to decide what to do with them.

Radio was invented with the original idea that it would replace telephones and give us wireless communication. That implies two-way communication, yet how many of us own radio transmitters? In fact, the popularization of radio came as a broadcast medium, with powerful transmitters sending the same message -- entertainment -- to thousands or millions of inexpensive radio receivers. Television was the same way, envisioned at first as a two-way visual communication medium. Early phonographs could record as well as play and were supposed to make recordings that would be sent through the mail, replacing written letters. The magnetic tape cassette was invented by Phillips for dictation machines, but we use it to hear music on Sony Walkmans. Telephones went the other direction, since Alexander Graham Bell first envisioned his invention being used to pipe music to remote groups of people.

The point is that all these technologies found their greatest success being used in ways other than were originally expected. Thats what will happen with personal computers too. Fifteen years from now, we wont be able to function without some sort of machine with a microprocessor and memory inside. Though we probably wont call it a personal computer, thats what it will be.

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PCs are still doomed and their end will come quicker than you think