Traveling Down Road of Progress
I was looking through a picture book of old cars last week after IBM made its much heralded announcement about OfficeVision, a collection of software that ties together all of its computers, from mainframes to micros.
The old cars helped me put things in perspective.
Personal computing is at about the same stage as the automobile of the 1930s. We’ve already seen the equivalent of the Model T in the IBM PC and the Model A in the IBM PC/AT.
Now the equivalents of V-8 engines have been invented--the Intel 80386 and Motorola 68030 microprocessor chips that are the brains of our most powerful personal computers.
In the 1930s, there also was a visionary car design called the Chrysler Airflow. It had a streamlined look that inspired auto designers through the 1940s and into the 1950s.
For microcomputing in the late 1980s, the Apple Macintosh seems to be the design leader. All indications are that computing in the ‘90s, and maybe even beyond, will imitate the graphics approach of the Macintosh.
Mainframes and minicomputers, already powerful for a long time, remind me of the railroads of the 1930s. They are the best ways to move large amounts of data around but they don’t have a lot of flexibility, certainly not compared to personal computers. Big changes are coming. I don’t think the 18-wheeled Kenworths or Peterbilts of computing have been built yet.
There are other parallels between computing today and transportation in the 1930s.
The roads then limited the usefulness of cars and trucks, and couldn’t compare to those of today. It certainly was an adventure then to drive from coast to coast or even from one state to another, just as it is an adventure today to connect one personal computer to another or to a whole group of computers in various locations near and far.
Shift to Fiber Optics
The roadways that connect computers to one another in what are known as local area and wide area networks are cables and telephone lines. These connections still are fairly slow and primitive, but something akin to the interstate highway system is coming for computers and telephones. It is called the Integrated Services Digital Network. When ISDN is in full operation--which may take about as long as the interstate highway system took to build--we will be able to transmit voice, video and computer data simultaneously over telephone lines.
The copper wires that connect our telephones and our computers will give way, just as dirt and macadam were replaced by concrete, to a more robust communications medium, fiber optics, by which signals are transmitted as light pulses.
What IBM announced with OfficeVision wasn’t equivalent to a new kind of car or even a new roadway.
Instead, OfficeVision suggests the shopping mall. In the 1930s, suburban shopping malls did not exist because the needed highways and the residential migration were not in place. For its part, OfficeVision is a bit ahead of its time because it depends on a lot of processing and communications power that is just beginning to be installed.
Shopping mall parking lots were never filled with Model Ts and Model As, and OfficeVision won’t be used by PCs and probably not by many PC/ATs. It will be the realm of high-performance PCs equipped with Intel’s 80386 microprocessors such as IBM’s PS/2 Models 70 and 80, which are crammed with lots of operating memory and large amounts of hard disk storage.
Looking toward those kinds of machines from today’s perspective, one sees big costs--$10,000 to $20,000--in an era when a $5,000 personal computer still seems expensive. But then, in the 1930s, a good car cost $500, and who could have imagined how powerful the later models would be or what we would pay for a car today?
The important news is that OfficeVision and similar efforts from other manufacturers will create whole new ways of doing business.
Easy Method of Operation
The IBM announcement is really the shell of the shopping mall. Its OfficeVision programs provide a common and easy method of operation for all of its families of computers. To do that, four separate versions of the program are required: one for personal computers running the new OS/2 operating system, another for IBM’s mid-range AS/400 computers and two versions of OfficeVision for IBM mainframes.
Much like the Macintosh, OfficeVision uses pictures on the screen and a mouse to instruct the computer.
OfficeVision itself meets just a few basic needs. The functions include electronic mail, an address book, scheduling, simple word processing and keeping track of files.
The software is patterned after something IBM calls Systems Application Architecture, a set of specifications that control the look and operation of the display screen. The goal is to make things so simple that you don’t have to know or care where the data you work with is stored in the computer system or even in what form. You just point the mouse at it and use it.
Of course, a shopping mall is nothing without the stores that fill it, and that is what IBM is hoping other software publishers will do for OfficeVision--write programs that can be seamlessly attached to it so that you can do everything you want, maybe even without knowing whose software you use to do it.
A dozen mainframe and minicomputer software publishers stood up with IBM at the recent news conference to say they would sell programs that can be teamed with OfficeVision. A few will be available late this year, the rest by the middle of next year.
So, whether you’re a computer nut or just someone who needs to get a job done, interesting times are ahead. Along the way, the roadside will be littered with outmoded machines hardly worth the metal and plastic in them.
Someday, however, those old machines may become classics. I’ve got this cherry old Kaypro portable stored in the garage just in case, and I know where I can get an Osborne cheap.
Computer File welcomes readers’ comments but regrets that the author cannot answer letters individually. Write to Richard O’Reilly, Computer File, Los Angeles Times, Times Mirror Square, Los Angeles, Calif. 90053.
