It is difficult today to understand how revolutionary VisiCalc was when it came on the scene in 1979. As the first spreadsheet application, it empowered users in organizations and businesses to do their own financial analyses, and freed them from the tyranny of the mainframe data centres of the day. Before the spreadsheet, for a lot of computational work, programs were run in batch mode, as opposed to being run in real time. A user would get in contact with Central I.S., adopt an appropriately deferential attitude, and meekly ask the stern analyst in the white lab coat behind the glass doors to run the job.
If you were lucky, and hadn’t pissed off the analyst recently (causing him to “forget” to schedule your job), the next day a large printout would be on your desk for you to dig through. Business at the speed of thought? Hardly. With the advent of Visicalc, you could get your numbers when you wanted, and insult I.T. nerds at your leisure, in safety.
No wonder the PC was resisted by traditional IT staff for so long; with the loss of control that applications like VisiCalc represented, the power of the I.T. staff was neutralized, and like Jericho, the walls came tumbling down.
It’s sadly ironic that three decades later, the battle for control is being fought again, but the the role of the traditional IT department is now filled by companies such as Apple, the people who were the rebels thirty years ago. The battlefield has shifted from the data centre to the mobile device; Apple’s capricious, murky, and inconsistent App Store application approval process is seen as a heavy handed attempt by Apple to maintain dominance, even as prominent developers publicly abandon iPhone development efforts. The term “jailbreaking” for installing software allowing the user to install whatever they want on the iPhone is most app.
Apple is not alone in its desire for control. The recently released Google Chrome OS seems to be designed to push the users towards Google-controlled services, and away from running the apps they wish to run, and storing the data where they wish to store it. The Cloud is being shaped into a tool for giving the public freedom from choice. And who knows what Microsoft has in mind for Azure.
Throw in a soupcon of DRM, erode fair use, patent everything in sight, and whip up some security fears, and the three decades of relative computer freedom we have enjoyed could be just an anomaly.
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