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'60s corporate comp[uting was IBM or single purpose appliances

PCs come out of a hobbyist branch, not a corporate branch---they were "solutions waiting for problems".

Watch and calculator are the consumer equivalent of the information appliance --- and at heart this has got to do with having someone to blame when it doesn't work.

PCs were always expected to run s/w written by authors other than the manufacturer ... but the PC, until the early 80s, was still considered a hobbyist toy.

Corporate computing moved to the mini-computer - still a dumb-terminal system that ran entreprise specific tasks and some general buisness functions.

Un-networked, hobbyist nature of PC made it particularly lax about security.

The PC started winning through its killer business apps - wordprocessor, spreadsheet and relational database, while the hobbyist uses led to the development of games.

Business adopted the PC for cost reasons, despite its basic unsuitability to group work; homes bought the PC for one thing and discovered many things they could do with it.

Microsoft genuinely wanted an open PC running many companies' code, not a s/w monopoly for itself.

A vast network of PCs ready to run new s/w offered a market for new s/w, a market that only grew as the Internet eliminated the cost of the transaction.

The core of Apple's and MS's business was in making attractive Operating Systems rather than in creating applications themselves, pace the MS antitrust cases of the 1990s that were precisely about such moves.

The backwater of hobbyist computing environemnt was essential to the experimentation & risk-taking that made the PC.

But the PC revolution went beyond the tinkerers to the non-technical user because of the ease with which PC h/w can be re-used for other purposes.

Here is the typical pattern: creative amateur chaos -> successful product -> market take-over -> risk to interests from original chaos --> temptation to lock it all down.

Actually, this product rarely encouraged developing new products from scratch. While it was possible to do with difficulty, by that skill level it would be much easier to use a protoboard and discrete components. Any level of structural control will limit the user to some degree from the freedom to create. This is actually a very good example, and a survey of the various products and their creative possibilities would make for an interesting way to explore this question of flexibility and generativity.

Abraham's new Lego-style electronic project kit is much more "controlled" than my old Radio Shack one -- and he will get less out of it, though it may be easier and more satisfying in some ways, he won't understand discrete components. Compare Ted Kilpin's e-mail about PIC controllers.

The fundamental threshold difference was the ease of transporting functionality with the floppy drive. This gave the Apple II a first opportunity to allow this kind of conspiring. Other platforms (Imsai, Altair, Compucolor, etc.) all had, or eventually supported, floppy drives, and there was some conspiracy, but the Apple's was the most plug-and-play of them all.

iPhone needs Apple permission before you can tinker; Apple can remote modify it; it is a controlled system.

ahah ! - sterile the iphone ?... not so... it has now many app. done free, as the next widgetbox web2 ways - and it is a very great inspiration too, an industrial asian has produced a similar product better...and of course as usual, protections attract hackers to modify or to use free: it's done...

The dark side of openness - viruses, spam, crashes - makes the closed philosophy of the iPhone attractive to consumers.

generative creativity = dangerous; closed consumption = "safe"

This is a very important tension to consider, and one that will take time to work through.

iPhone / Apple II story is representative of the Internet: it is moving form the open to the tethered, the generative to the controlled.

The original PC is a blank slate.

Apple II is a user object; iPhone is a consumer object (open / closed)

Boxed appliances are fine, but they endanger the NEXT ROUND of innovation --- innovation-types they themselves were dependent on in the past.

If the generative aspect is ursurped by closed appliances, the ecosystem dies as a productive source of further innovation

When there is separation of PC ownership and use, interests diverge: stability versus "wilderness"

As long as a PC can run code it is given, and especially with broadband connectivity, the dangers are there, and are serious.

like a natural ecosystem, open and generative platforms can provide habitat for dangerous pathogens (viruses, invaders, etc.)

These dangers add support for lockdown and interference by the surveiling centre --- with all the dangers this implies in authoritarian states.

lockdowns as monoculture... safe, but sterile

Lockdowns and box-appliances will destroy the creativity of IT, and to stop this happening we'll need new technologies, communities that sustain the right ethos and a sense of public purpose.

The everlasting battle will be between open, Web 2.0 systems and services and "bottled power" as exemplified by the iPhone.

- users (vs. consumers?) stay in the generative loop via Web 2.0 applications

free services and ...ware = battle for money may change to battle for communities influences and direct human exchanges