I had just opened the doors at Foo Bar when Larry, Mo, and Curly Joe walked in. Laurence Wilde, tall and suave, covered high tech for some smart British journal. Maureen McBean had the same beat on a Silicon Valley daily. Joe Weaver wrote for some airline magazine and was as bald as an egg. Naturally, I called them Larry, Mo, and Curly Joe. Naturally, not to their faces. Mo was first to the bar, as usual. She gave me a fishy look.
"So, Swaine."
I poured her usual. "So, Mo."
"I hear you're hiring undocumented workers over at Dobb's."
"You must be thinking of 'Undocumented Corner.'"
"Jeez, couldn't you at least give 'em cubicles?"
"Ahem. Say, Lawrence," I said, pouring him a glass of white wine, "what's your take on Oracle's Network Computer reference standard?" I like to get to the heavy stuff while they're still sober.
He grimaced. "Good Lord, the Notworking Computer? Dead-on idea, dead-wrong timing."
Joe reached across the bar to where I keep the cream soda. "Sounds like a great deal to me. A client/server networked computer that lives on the Net and runs Java applets and sells for under a thou. What's wrong with that?"
"Bandwidth, Joseph, bandwidth. Americans hate standing on line. And that's what the online world is at fourteen dot four: standing on line."
Mo cut in. "Lemme tell ya something, Larry. It's not about standing on line, and by the way, we say 'standing in line' in this country, okay?"
"Pray tell, Maureen, what is it about then?"
"It's about control, Larry. NC means somebody else maintains the storage space where you keep your stuff. Somebody else says whether you can use this capability or access that data today. Unless somebody else gives you access, your NC is a paperweight."
"But you see, Maureen, deep in their hearts, the good folks at Oracle really want to invent television. They may not know it, but they do. The consumer version of NC is for delivering interactive thingummies to the living room. And if your competition is cable companies, the issue is not control, which is a lost cause. It's bandwidth, or did I mention that already?"
Joe had been trying to break in. "But you're ignoring the corporate user."
Mo cut him off. "Nope. Corporate installations typically have their biggest investment in software, not hardware. NC calls for reengineering the software. Bad deal. Also, when there's a PC on your employee's desk, you can demand that report in the next hour and hold the employee responsible for delivering it. With an NC, it's back to, 'It's not my fault, the network was down.'"
Laurence suddenly spread his arms wide, upsetting Joe's cream soda but otherwise achieving a fine dramatic effect. "Look people, this is a fascinating exercise, but let's face it: Corporate decisions are not made on the basis of technology, markets, or profits. They are made on the basis of stock price. Every technology company, large, small, or virtual, wants to be the next Netscape. Or what is the same thing, to convince the market that it is. That is Oracle's strategy, and it has nothing to do with technology, and that is why NC will not take over the world, but Oracle's management just might."
I tuned out then, since I didn't have a clue what Laurence was talking about. If you're interested in other views on the NC revolution, you might consult Scientific American, August; The Economist, May 25; or NewMedia, July 15. But maybe not, since I've repackaged the meat of all three of those essays in this little sausage. (That'll be funnier when I put this up on my web site at http://www.cruzio.com/~mswaine, where I can refer to "this spicy link.")
Michael Swaine
editor-at-large
mswaine@cruzio.com