by efarmer » Sat 31 Jan 2015, 14:47:35
I lived through the era, I remember in the 1970-1980s how every office had an IBM Selectric typewriter, and perhaps a 3270 terminal or two lashed to a mainframe somewhere, or even an IBM PC emulating a terminal and running some aps standalone. IBM had the moxie, and the brains, they created a strategy for documents to be portable between processing domains called SGML (standard generalized markup language) in the 1960's that inspired Adobe decades later to morph the idea into HTML, which proved useful for web pages. They hatched many creative eggs in their prime, but did not run with the new chickens that hatched out from them. The mainframe gave way to the server farm, and the terminal is a smart phone, and the Apples, and Googles, and Amazons, and Facebook, and the like have the money, the creative horsepower, and the cred to dominate like IBM once did. The moral is when you have lit up people laying creative eggs, you might consider hatching them and not being who you used to be until you are not relevant in the next paradigm.
I type this on an IBM keyboard, made in 1984 in the US, and with the feel of a Selectric keyboard, lashed to my Windows 7 machine. I hope it doesn't croak on me, because they simply don't make a keyboard that feels this good and runs for 30 years without a hitch anymore, and if you can type like a demon, can hang with you and pitch a bitch.
