In the February 19, 1996 issue of Newsweek Steve Wozniak is quoted as saying:

" Our first computers were born not out of greed or ego but in the revolutionary spirit of helping common people rise above the most powerful institutions"

Great stuff.  And who were those "most powerful institutions"?  They were the mainframe and mini-computers vendors of the day – IBM, HP, Digital, Prime, Wang, Data General, Control Data, etc.  Most people don’t remember those days too well because the micro-computer (or PC as it came to be known) has insinuated itself into just about every part of our lives.  And in the same way, it’s hard to imagine a world bereft of all the innovation the PC-revolution sparked.  For example, can you really remember a world without spreadsheet applications or the browser?  All of which points to something I think about all the time.  Ten years from now, what will we look back on and say "how on Earth could we have lived without…[fill in appropriate invention here]"?  Revolutionary possibilities are all around us.  There are many "powerful institutions" that are holding up innovation.  The key is finding those most vulnerable and then doing something about it.  I think the spirit Wozniak describes is alive and well and there are plenty more revolutions to be had.

Posted in DIY, Open Source, Power to the People by Peter Semmelhack | on Thursday, March 8th, 2007 at 9:44 am. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.