Skip to main content

Home/ oD Digest - Future of the Internet Annotation/ Contents contributed and discussions participated by Peter Zelchenko

Contents contributed and discussions participated by Peter Zelchenko

Peter Zelchenko

The Future of the Internet-And How to Stop It » Chapter 2: Battle of the Netw... - 1 views

shared by Peter Zelchenko on 30 Apr 08 - Cached
  • what cheap processors would small firms and mainstream consumers be using today? One possibility is a set of information appliances.
    • Peter Zelchenko
       
      That is proven, with cell phones, iPods, calculators. More broadly, it can be said that nongenerative appliances coexist with generative devices. It's not so clear whether one subverts the other without a lot of force behind it.
    • Peter Zelchenko
       
      I'm not convinced of the direction here -- the Brother or Smith-Corona appliance typewriter was supplanted not by a generative product, per se, but by Word Perfect, WordStar, Microsoft Word, and other competitors. No open-system revolution brought this about, only high-stakes competitive market cannibalism. It was not the open programmability of the PC and Mac that inaugurated the market, but the plug-and-play capability of the new product, coupled with the price point.
  • dial-up modem
    • Peter Zelchenko
       
      Better known as the "acoustic coupler," which gives the layman a better idea of its shape and function.
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • minicomputer
    • Peter Zelchenko
       
      You mean mainframe, correct? Also worth a mention is CBBS and the other hobbyist networks that predate CompuServe, et al.
Peter Zelchenko

The Future of the Internet-And How to Stop It » Chapter 1: Battle of the Boxes - 0 views

shared by Peter Zelchenko on 29 Apr 08 - Cached
  • invent entirely new appliances from scratch as long as they had the ideas and the patience to attach lots of wires to springy posts.
    • Peter Zelchenko
       
      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.
  • Radio Shack’s “75-in-1 Electronic Project Kit,”
    • Peter Zelchenko
       
      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.
  • But PCs were still firmly grounded in the realm of hobbyists, alongside 75-in-1 Project Kit designs.
    • Peter Zelchenko
       
      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.
1 - 2 of 2
Showing 20 items per page