OT-computer history/ very OT

[Susan McGee]

No: HPFGUIDX 3661

--- In HPforGrownups at egroups.com, Amanda Lewanski <editor at t...> wrote:
> 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


Oh. Got it. Don't agree. The internet is a tool like any other, and 
one of the things it has done is allow ordinary citizens to get 
information. For example, it is changing the face of international 
adoption, because parents can now share information. 

Susan