Dr. Dobb's Journal April 1998
I had the honor of being one of the panelists at the recent Fustian Conference on the Future of Everything. The following is a partial transcript of one session. The moderator was journalist Maureen "Mo" McBean.
McBean: Welcome to the panel discussion on the Future of Computing. The panelists here truly need no introduction, so why don't we just begin.
My cousin Corbett (whom nobody remembered inviting): Well, I'll jump in with a prediction. I predict that by the year 2010, everyone will have the equivalent of an SGI workstation implanted in the cornea of each eye, so that they can see the world through a stereoscopic virtual-reality filter. I'm wearing a pair now. Stewart Alsop over there looks just like a big Dilbert to me.
Wired magazine founder Louis Rossetto: You're probably right, but I think we're rushing to the future too fast. We need to slow down the pace of innovation.
McBean: I thought you were the "change-is-good" man?
Rossetto: Well, I've changed.
McBean: Does anyone else feel that the pace of innovation should or will slow down?
Lackadaisical presidential candidate Ralph Nader: Microsoft does. It is Microsoft's plan to bring innovation to a standstill by making it unthinkable for anyone to buy a nonMicrosoft product.
Inflight magazine journalist "Curly" Joe Weaver: Like IBM in the 1960s.
Nader: By the year 2010, Microsoft will be IBM.
Former IBM CEO John Akers: Serves them right.
Peripatetic presidential candidate Ross Perot: I know what y'all mean. When the competition is toast, you can coast. But my gracious, they're already coastin'. You know what they call Windows 95, don'tcha? A 32-bit patch for a 16-bit GUI shell running on top of an eight-bit operating system written for a four-bit processor by a two-bit company that can't stand one bit of competition. I got a chart here...
McBean: But for the sake of argument, let's assume there will be innovation. What form will it take? John?
Omniscient venture capitalist John Doerr: I know, but if I told you, I'd have to kill you.
McBean: Fair enough. Anyone else?
Weaver: I'm pretty optimistic myself. Take Java...
New journalist Matt Drudge: The question is, where was Bill Clinton on November 22, 1963?
Professional alarmist Jeremy Rifkin: That's not the question. The question is whether computing even has a future, or whether the whole enterprise will perish in a massive meltdown of Biblical proportions.
British journalist Lawrence Wilde: Ah, yes. The Year 2000 problem.
Bandleader Al Stevens: What amazes me about proposed solutions to the Year 2000 problem is the belief that these septuagenarian Cobol hackers will still be able to read their code. Does anyone think that today's C programmers will be able to decipher their old code 30 years hence?
Wilde: I believe I catch your drift. Cobol does have the advantage that it is harder to write something truly incomprehensible in it than in C. Although, over the years, many Cobol programmers have risen to the challenge, I believe. Still, C feeds the same obscurantist mania that was responsible for the release of APL from the bestiary into the water supply. Personally, I've always thought it highly appropriate that every C statement is terminated with a wink.
Perot: Is that an emoticon joke? I purely hate those things.
McBean: Mike, I know you're doing an interview next month with Bob Bemer, one of those Cobol programmers who says he has a solution to the Year 2000 problem. Any thoughts?
Swaine: I just hope it won't take up so much space that I can't run the solution to the second clock puzzle. Reader Pushkar Piggott wrote me to point out that the user interface of digital clocks passes on the "off by one" bug to the user. He's discovered that this bug seems to afflict poets as well. I mean, the "11th hour" featured in so much poetry and other flowery writing is supposed to be the hour just before midnight, right? But that's the twelfth hour. All poetry is off by an hour.
McBean: Well, that's a thought, I guess.
--Michael Swaine