This videotape tells the story of how, during the past forty years or so, electronic computers have been transformed from large, expensive, difficult-to-use machines utilized only by a highly-skilled "priesthood" of scientists and engineers to small, inexpensive, easy-to-use household tools of the common person. The analogy is made to books, which, hundreds of years ago, were rare and expensive objects that could be found almost exclusively in libraries and universities, and which were useful only to those few highly-educated people capable of reading.
One of the milestones in this transformation occurred in the early 1970's, with the development of the microprocessor by Intel's Ted Hoff. This, together with subsequent and continuing advances in the "miniaturization" of electronics, has allowed computers to become increasingly smaller and cheaper over the years.
During the early 1970's, however, there was not much reason to think that a large market existed for microcomputers. It was believed that, outside the relatively small (and rather eccentric, to put it politely) community of electronics hobbyists, there were not many people would have any use for (and, more importantly, be willing to buy) such devices. Hence, large computer companies such as IBM continued serving their "mainframe" customers —mainly universities and large corporations— without entering the microcomputer market. (IBM did attempt to market a "personal computer" (called the IBM 5100) in 1975, but it did not sell well, perhaps because the basic unit cost about $5000, and for it "to really do anything" (in the words of one interviewee) you needed to spend about $4000 more on accessories. The narrator refers to IBM's marketing efforts as "half-hearted" but does not explain any further.)
In hindsight, it is clear that IBM and the other companies grossly underestimated the potential market for microcomputers, as is evidenced by the fact that, by the late 1970's, the Apple Computer Co. —founded a few years earlier (in a garage) by Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak— had become a multi-million dollar company.
In 1981, IBM re-entered the microcomputer market, in earnest, with its IBM PC, and soon it dominated the market. In the years that followed, a number of companies manufactured so-called "IBM clones". Apple, in contrast to IBM, did not allow its technology to be used by other companies, however. Among the biggest sellers of PC's in the early 2000's were Dell, Gateway, and Compaq. Apple still commands a small, but loyal, share of the market.
As the 1970's passed into the 1980's, more and more people became interested in owning a microcomputer. In large part, this was due to the fact that useful software applications were becoming available. Besides games, these included VisiCalc (the first spreadsheet software package, developed by Frankston and Bricklin), various word processing software packages, and Lotus 1-2-3 (by Mitch Kapor, who appears on the videotape), which combined spreadsheet, graphics, and database capabilities.
By the early 1980's, computers had become small and affordable, and there existed several useful application packages. And even though computers had become much easier to use than they had been in the 1950's and 1960's, there remained a major barrier that discouraged large numbers of people from becoming users: computers were still difficult to use. In part, this was due to the fact that user interfaces (to both application and system software) were of the command line variety. The graphical user interface (GUI) was not yet on the scene.
Interestingly, although GUI's were not to be found (in commercial software) during the early 1980's, the groundwork for them had been established a decade before by people such as Doug Engelbart, who invented the computer mouse, and Ivan Sutherland, whose Sketchpad software had given rise not only to the field of computer graphics but also to interactive computing. (On the videotape, Kapor refers to Engelbart, perhaps somewhat hyperbolically, as "the single most important person in the history of computing".) Interestingly (and perhaps sadly), Sutherland's and Engelbart's ideas went largely ignored for some time.
Among those who did take notice were the many young researchers at Xerox PARC (Palo Alto Research Center). The Xerox PARC project began around 1970 with the goal of finding ways to make computers easier to use. Many of the ideas to emerge from this effort came as a result of attempting to view the world from a child's perspective. Among these ideas was that of making the screen give the illusion of something familiar, such as a desktop strewn with documents, and of giving the user the ability to manipulate that illusion in a natural way, such as by reaching out and grabbing a document (using the mouse).
Xerox (which was, after all, a copy machine company and not a computer company) was never able to translate the intellectual achievements of its Palo Alto Research Center into commercial benefit. But others would!
In 1979, Steve Jobs (who, along with Steve Wozniak, founded Apple Computer, recently renamed Apple Inc.) visited Xerox PARC and was profoundly impressed by their ideas. He immediately concluded that the future of the PC must include the GUI. With much fanfare, Apple introduced its Macintosh computer (via a TV commercial during the 1984 Super Bowl), whose operating system offered a GUI. This gave rise to a new era in computing.
The videorecording goes on to show children making fruitful use of computers and illustrates how computers can serve as an aid to physically handicapped persons, allowing them to take part in educational activities and to communicate more easily.
The last part of the videorecording presents the idea of virtual reality, a technology that allows people to become immersed in a "world" simulated by the computer.