[HPforGrownups] Re: OT-computer history

[Amanda Lewanski]

No: HPFGUIDX 3610

Susan McGee wrote:

> > > Oh, it was Steve Jobs and Wozniak (can't remember his first name) who
> > > worked in their basement. Anyway, the personal desktop computer was
> > > the idea of 60s radicals who wanted to take the power of computing
> > > away from the Pentagon and give it to the people. Very counter-
> > > cultural and anti-bureaucratic.
> >
> > Shot that foot clean off, didn't they?

> ??? Sorry, Amanda, what do you mean?

An extreme form of "shooting oneself in the foot," an expression for
injuring yourself when you were trying to do unto someone or something else.
The goals of the PC inventors are rather amusing considering what the PC and
its derivatives have grown to be. "Counter-cultural" and now it's fast
becoming the dominant cultural determinant; "anti-bureaucratic" and it's the
tool that let bureaucracies grow and thrive. I was commenting on the irony.

--Amanda