Conference 7.286::digital

    I'm sure that he was talking to a screen writer when he said that.  It
    was only dialogue for a fictional character in a movie about a computer
    company.  :-)
    
    Mark

    Ken's prophecy was absolutely right on the money!  Our very own efforts
    in that business did fall flat on their respective Pro, Rainbow faces, as
    far as the marketplace was concerned.                                 
    
    :>)
    
    Jack

I thought Ken was talking about 'Political Correctness'?


B^)

    Does anyone believe that Ken may have been more right than wrong ? 
    
    Ken is and was an engineer first and a visionary second.  Ken never
    subscribed to marketing and sales as the way to build a presence in the
    marketplace.  Unfortunately, for Ken, the marketplace since the 50's has
    been increasingly driven by marketing - including advertising, and sales.
    The impact of mass marketing has driven us to a short-term, trendy,
    view in many facets of things that we do.  We have been driven away
    from strategy and planning into reactionary optimism. Look at annual
    reports this year, "A reflection of Shareholder Value..." seems to be
    the common thread.   
    Ken made a statement that may prove, in the longer run, to be more right
    than wrong.  Looking back, it may have been a mistake to avoid entry
    into the marketplace, but Ken, the board, and what was previously Bob
    Palmer, Larry Walker, SCIT, and many un-named people and organizations did 
    make the right decisions for the future of the technology marketplace.    
    Ken only missed the mark in picking what would become a strategic
    marketplace to carry us through the VAX to ALPHA product life cycle. 
     
    Look at PC's in the context of business expenditures. If you consider
    for a moment the "hidden" costs of implementing a PC style work
    environment and contrast that against the cost of operating a mainframe
    style environment, you will very quickly see that the distributed
    environment is replete with costs that very quickly ratchet up the
    overall operational costs and this says nothing of the damage that can
    be done by information spies to trade secrets, projects, and corporate
    competitive information. What is going on in the marketplace now is a
    major transition not unlike that of the early 1900's farm-era to
    industrial era.  Now, as we enter the "information" or "knowledge" era,
    we as consumers can derive the benefit of access to information by
    combining the power of the television and the telephone - at home.  As
    employees in a business, the PC actually provides us with quicker 
    response, a more mobile platform, and the ability to "customize" our
    work environment, but, what has the end result been in productivity ?
    Downsizing has allowed corporations to increase profitability in many
    cases, but has the impact of the PC been as significant as the
    development of the very first computers ? Or, is the PC "need" driven
    by our competitive interests to keep up with the Jones's ? Is it safe
    to say that the real leap in technology here is the advent of
    a three-tier model which has identical baseline characteristics to the 
    mainframe model but provides for significant marketing and sales 
    opportunities ? I think if you really sit down and speak with some
    early adopters who have fairly strong business acumen, you will find
    that Ken may have been more right than wrong when he made that
    statement.  In fact, the following is taken from note 4035.2;
    
         "the comic strip, B.C., describes the Internet in a way that I
          believe can also apply to notes conferences" - and PCs ??
        
                      "the potbelly stove of the '90s"
    
    If you look at the technology marketplace, the PC may, to businesses be
    the "potbelly" stove to some extent, and may in fact be more advantageously
    positioned in the consumer marketplace as a powerful medium which enhances
    the ability of the user to learn, manage, explore, and, communicate with
    the global marketplace.  In short, for somewhat limited expense, the
    consumer can visit places that 5 years ago may not have been accessible. 
    For the next two years, PC sellers probably have the combined advantages
    of business perception,consumer demand, and increasinging profitability as
    the impact of "downsizing" and "re-engineering" take hold. But, after
    the realization takes hold that de-centralization is much more
    expensive, businesses will begin to take another look at operational
    models and begin to examine core operational strategies.  In short, I
    believe that the PC of today in many cases, will be replaced by
    "terminal" type tools such as MULTIA which is available today. This
    gives the business user the advantage of running PC style applications
    and the business the ability to control its' computing environment
    within the constraints of a mainframe style environment.  I think this
    is central to Kens longer view of the business environment.  In todays 
    model, we have Servers that achieve much higher performance than their
    mainframe predecessors but in the context of the single tier model, the 
    User Interface (PC/terminal), Code (Server/System) and Data (Storage) 
    still resides in the same basic place.         
    If you take a big picture look at businesses, the industrial engine has
    always been driven by more powerful and more costly tools - tailored to
    the harsher environment.  If you look at Microsoft and the operational 
    divisionalization of NT into workstation and server, you get an 
    industrialized tool that is quite compatible with the decentralized
    model, the rapid improvements that the computer brings, and the control
    and security considerations that businesses require in order to protect
    themselves from competitive exposure. As our recent strategic alliance
    indicates and market alliances move forward, we will once again move
    toward the divisionalization of consumerized and industrialized
    products and if this is true we may one day see that the PC has, in
    fact, flopped in the "business" sense and been replaced by something
    which more closely approximates human reasoning capabilities.       
    

    "de-centralization is much more expensive"
    
    I'm not sure that I agree.  Yes, you may save a few on the headcount,
    but you will slow the pace of development and probably kill any
    incentive for inovation.  What's really more expensive in the long
    view?
    
    Mark
    
    PS.  Okay, so Arlan reads DISCOVER and I read the funnies.  At least I
    understand what I'm reading.  :-)

>    PS.  Okay, so Arlan reads DISCOVER and I read the funnies.  At least I
>    understand what I'm reading.  :-)
    
    		Kuh-SLAAAAAM !!!!

Re: .5

whew!!!

I'll think I'll print that one out and read it later...

8*)

    re: .5
    
    I lived in Washington DC during the mid-70's.  At the time, the
    Smithsonian had a bicentenial exhibit based on their centenial exhibit
    from 1976 (same stuff, same building, 100 years later).
    
    Amid the contents of the exhibit (imagine the pages of an
    old Sears catalog come to life) there was a ROOM FULL of sewing
    machines, powered by a series of leather belts and steel shafts tied to a
    single GIGANTIC electric motor.  I thought about this for a long time;
    how restrictive it must have been!  But then I realized that this was
    due the the way things had evolved; they had just replaced a system of
    powering the many sewing machines by water wheel or steam engine with
    an electric one.
    
    From today's viewpoint, it all looked silly, because we are so used to
    each sewing machine having its own motor.  There is this other key point: 
    the gigantic electric motor (must have been 6 feet in diameter) was
    only 3 HORSEPOWER!!   What a perfect analog to a Mainframe!  :^)
    
    ----------------------------------------------------------------------
    
    Whenever folks talk about the "merits" of PC-based computing, I always
    remember this exhibit.  To me, it doesn't matter if the mainframe was
    easier to manage, more cost effective, etc. - when computing became
    small and cheap enough to distribute down to the personal level, it
    happened, as it did with electric motors and motorized vehicles
    earlier.  And as with these two, I also believe that we will eventually
    reach a balance (remember when everything had to be powered by some
    sort of electric motor?  kind of reminds me of the predictions for
    micro-chips to be imbedded in everything today). BUT WE WILL NEVER
    RETURN TO A WORLD WHERE PERSONAL COMPUTERS DO NOT EXIST EVER AGAIN,
    just as it is unlikely we will see cars and electric-motor-powered
    devices vanish from sight.
    
    To me, the irony of what KO said is that the same forces that made
    the success of Digital Equipment as a company possible also would
    eventually make the PC a success.  Now the PC is reshaping society 
    in a manner similar to how the automobile and electric motor
    reshaped everything earlier.  FWIW, I am glad Digital has FINALLY 
    recognized this as fact; I would hate to think what might have happened
    to us all if this change of heart had not occurred.
    
    Charles 
    

    If I may add a small footnote to your excellent note, Charles --
    
    One of the most delicious ironies of KO's observation was that it was
    made from one of the premier seats of America's first industrial
    revolution -- a factory that had ITSELF become obsolete and empty
    because of the rise of distributed manufacturing, away from centralized
    power sources, and to which KO had given new life.  
    
    When I was lucky enough to have an office in the Mill (when my part of
    Corporate Research lived there), I reflected almost daily on how
    strange & wonderful it was to be part of a company which had forged the
    SECOND industrial revolution -- the minicomputer -- and which had
    missed the opportunity to lead the third.  Fortunately for us, as you
    observe, we are well on the way to recovery from that classic but
    all-too-human blunder.  
    
    My Dad is a retired General Electric engineer of ~the same vintage as
    KO.  While I was growing up, our house was the most technologically
    advanced private home in the region -- there must have been an
    electrical appliance or hand-installed electric motor, ready to do
    something useful, in virtually every room of the house.  The guy was a
    classic "early adopter," MIT '32, who studied with "Doc" Edgerton --
    probably before he got his "Doc"torate -- and who himself went on to
    win every award for engineering excellence that GE had to give.  He
    also was responsible for bringing mainframe computers and early CAD
    systems into his aircraft engine division.
    
    But does he use ANY sort of PC now?  Has he EVER touched one as a user
    (not counting ATMs etc.)?  But NOOooooo! :-)  Not that I don't love &
    respect him beyond words, of course -- but I sure am frustrated that
    that still-sharp intellect of his (I got him a consultancy with Ray
    Kurzweil  awhile back, and he STILL actively consults in the medical
    instrumentation field at age 84!) doesn't feel comfortable at play
    around the delightful abstractions of modern-day computing.  
    
    There's a classic saying that we become our parents, but we resist it
    until the day we look in the mirror and whaddayaknow, there he or she
    is!  And I fondly hope that if *I* get to 84, that I'm not stuck
    hacking LISP or HTML or TCL while my daughters, sons-in-law, &
    grandkids (I *definitely* wanna live so long) are happily playing with
    those damn newfangled robots and teaching THEM how to think logically.
    
    But I probably will, regrettably, tend to recapitulate ontogeny and
    embarrass myself by remaining most comfortable with these klunky things
    that you can only type into, and which don't complain if you keep 'em
    on your lap and reboot them without asking whether they would mind.
                                              

        I'm reminded of the articles that show up periodically that
        talk about how much more efficient rail transportation is
        than the private automobile, and how we should be building
        new railroads and rapid transit lines rather than roads and
        parking lots.

        While the efficiency arguments may be true, they are
        irrelevant in the market place.

        Bob

    Thinking corporately (as opposed to the home desktop) I find it
    interesting to note that what is helping advance the "personal"
    computer is the discovery of the network and the "server". The purpose
    of the server, of course, is to protect the system from the user and
    keep the user under control. 
    That large central wheel is coming back.
    Maybe Ken was right in that the computing world will never be little
    islands of individual machines, but most business/corporate operations
    will require some measure of central management/control (think domain
    in Windows NT).
    
    Rob Wall
    
    [Our local video rental store used to use a single 11/83 or /93 and 2
    VT220's with bar code readers and LA75's. The only problem was that
    after a power failure the re-boot time was a little long for a retail
    operation. Now they have a PC server (mini-tower type) and 2 desktop
    PCs. What it amounts to is that they have really smart terminals!
    Still DEC products by the way.]
    

        Reply to:   FYI & Fun

 >   But I probably will, regrettably, tend to recapitulate ontogeny and
 >   embarrass myself by remaining most comfortable with these klunky things
 >   that you can only type into, and which don't complain if you keep 'em
 >   on your lap and reboot them without asking whether they would mind.

What??!?  You still type on PCs?!??  Daddy-o, you gotta start using brainwave
recognition technology.  I program my SGI wksta with the mere force of my will.

love,
xxx

    RE: .10
    
    Dr. Dan, what a cracking note. May I also say, how pleased I am that
    you're still around. You went all quiet a few weeks ago...
    
    Cheers, Laurie.

    RE: .10
    
    Thanks for the insight on the Mill!  I certainly do appreciate the
    irony in Digital's selling-off the Mill as sort of symbol of joining
    the rest of the industry in the same 2-3 storey buildings in the 'burbs
    in which all our competition also dwell.
    
    RE: .11
    
    Aside from electrical power, the other analogy is certainly the
    transportation industry.  As someone who spent a good chunk of his
    academic career studying public mass transit systems, as well as the
    first four years of my professional career consulting to railroads,
    some of the parallels to today's issues are very similar; the two that
    come to mind are:
    
    1.	As more and more people started using autos to get to/from work, 
    	the transit companies began raising rates to compensate.  This
    	started a "death spiral" where the higher the rate went, the more
    	rapidly the remaining customer base applied classic economics and
    	switched to the increasingly cheaper and more flexible subsitute.
    
    	Eventually, only passengers that really didn't have much choice
    	(the so-called "captive ridership" of people that did not have
   	cars) kept riding busses/subways/trolleys/etc.  This left transit
    	companies with very large infrastructures for a diminished
    	ridership, as well as very "peaky" demand (during the rush hours),
    	which was expensive to manage from an operations standpoint.  In
    	addition, the cities themselves began to reform around the auto,
    	making the central cities less and less the target of work-trips,
    	which were the core of the remaining business; over the long term,
    	the outlook for the transit companies was even more bleak.
    	
    	This same pattern can be seen repeated for several other transport
    	industries as well (intercity rail passenger and freight traffic
    	come to mind, as does passenger ship travel from New York to
    	England and France).  ANYONE ELSE OUT THERE RECOGNIZE THIS PATTERN
    	IN OUR INDUSTRY ??  ;^)  Hint: Just ask anyone who justified 
    	personal computer purchases in the 80's.
    
    
    2.	When transit companies and railroads first came along in the last
    	century, they often were given the land and right-of-way under the
    	tracks; in the railroad's case, supposedly there was even this "50
    	miles either side of the tracks" rule (for the western railroads).
    	This was beneficial at the beginning, because it "encouraged" the
    	development of these systems, essentially giving them a franchise
    	for controlling their corridors. 
    	
    	Unfortunately, this later came back to haunt them, because taxes,
    	cost of operations, loss of traffic volumes, etc. made this very 
    	expensive, but they had a problem: THEIR RATES WERE REGULATED.
    	This lead to a long process where they kept trying to raise rates
    	and/or abandon right-of-way, constantly fighting remaining
    	customers, the towns, the ICC, whatever.  THE REAL PROBLEM WAS THEY
    	HAD USED SUBSIDIES FROM ONE AREA OF OPERATIONS TO FINANCE OTHER
    	AREAS (usually with less traffic and therefore higher operating
    	costs).  When the change came, which usually meant loss of traffic
    	from the most profitable routes first, they were stuck.  ANYONE 
    	RECOGNIZING SIMILARITIES BETWEEN THIS SITUATION AND THE CURRENT 
    	MESS IN THE TELECOM INDUSTRY GETS A CIGAR (CHOCOLATE OF COURSE)!
    
    Again, all the above is out of personal memory and my understanding of
    our industry here in North America (mostly the US); your mileage may
    vary...  My point is let's look for analogies for our current situation
    in times when there have been similar "sea changes" in other industries
    for some clues to what may happen in ours.  For example, I don't
    believe we will see the demise of either the mainframe (IBM-MVS) or the
    VAXen in the near future, any more than trucking has killed the
    railroads or even barge traffic. WHAT WILL CHANGE IS HOW THEY ARE USED,
    AND WHAT ROLE THEY WILL PLAY IN DRIVING OUR SOCIETY AND ECONOMY.
    
    Thanks again for reading and openly expressing your opinions.
    
    Charles  (Noting from my HO in Calgary Alberta)
    	
    

>    Aside from electrical power, the other analogy is certainly the
>    transportation industry.  As someone who spent a good chunk of his
>    academic career studying public mass transit systems, as well as the
>    first four years of my professional career consulting to railroads,
>    some of the parallels to today's issues are very similar;
    
    In other words your contention is that if you see a parallel in
    the rail industry then you're on the right track? :-)
                                                         

    RE: .15
    
    Bravo !  
    
    You've raised some excellent points, but isn't .0 targeting KOs
    comment ? How do you see your analogy fitting this theme ? 
    
    The nature of our industry as a whole is very healthy with
    major implications for the future.  Yes, the past implications of
    technology and consumerism have caused major rifts. But, if you
    consider the beneficial impact to cities, urban, and rural areas
    then, change is good.  Isn't it so in our industry ? 
       
    The transportation infrastructure in the US today really is symptomatic 
    of a heavily industrialized and mature economy. But, the current
    infrastructure took years to develop and was coupled with a rapidly
    expanding environment. If you consider that after WWII, the US was
    really the worlds ONLY industrialized power, then, rapid advances in
    the mobility of goods and services were warranted.  After all
    capitalism and corporate profits are based on expansionism beyond the
    rate of inflation aren't they ?  In part, the economic expansion was
    coupled with heavy defense investment and expenditure.  In fact, much
    of the current technology is based on defense research and expenditure. 
    This will not be the same into the future.  Most of the future
    technology developements will probably come from the entertainment
    industry. Don't the recent ABC and CBS mergers with technologically 
    oriented parent companies point in this direction ?  Largely, this will
    be based on consumer interests and attitudes, so the companies that pay
    attention to what their customers are saying are the companies that
    will win and continue to flourish in the new economy. 
    
    In todays technology environment companies are trying to do more faster
    and with less resources.  The measure is as it always has been -
    The Bottom Line.  But when you focus your attentions purely in ONE
    area, profitability, and forsake all others you go back to the same
    situation that hurt the railroads. There must be balance!  Consider
    for a moment that it is actually more cost effective to manage a
    discrete manufacturing environment by DECREASING lot and batch sizes.
    In order to do this you must understand where bottlenecks occur and
    make adjustments to the overall processes and then adjust the processes
    for maximum yield through each step.  This has the end result of
    increasing yields and actually can improve throughput. When these
    theoroms are coupled with JIT relationships with suppliers, then all
    three links (supplier, manufacturer, distributor) of the product chain
    win. And, in the end, you and I win because we make money to buy what
    we want, when we want, and in the price range that meets our needs.  I
    think the same can be said for the administrative and technical side of a
    business. The measure is there in employee productivity, but we have not
    yet learned how to manage a technologically oriented company within the
    constraints of a manufacturing process. That is where the true mastery
    of things like business process re-engineering come into play. That is
    where we will realize the true impact of technology and begin to
    understand the ramifications of KOs statement.  And, once our customers 
    begin to evaluate more of the hidden costs of technology, Digital and
    the 64 bit RISC architecture will once again hold many first place
    trophies. We, on the other hand must begin the process of helping our
    customers through the tempest by becoming an engine of planning and
    partnership that will help them to avoid investments in trains when
    their route will take them across oceans.       
 
           

re .11

>        While the efficiency arguments may be true, they are
>        irrelevant in the market place.

I think this judgement is premature.

A sober look at the whole system suggests that current
patterns of automotive transport cannot be sustained.

"Efficient transportation" will become increasingly
important both competitively and ecologicaly.

What form this will take is unclear, and risky to legislate.

- Peter