A
new medium invents itself - and the need for it. It also
generates its own market to satisfy this newly found need.
Two prime examples are the personal computer and the compact
disc.
When the PC was invented, its uses were completely unclear.
Its performance was lacking, its abilities limited, it was
horribly user unfriendly.
It suffered from faulty design, absent user comfort and ease
of use and required considerable professional knowledge to
operate. The worst part was that this knowledge was unique to
the new invention (not portable).
It reduced labour mobility and limited one's professional
horizons. There were many gripes among those assigned to tame
the new beast.
The PC was thought of, at the beginning, as a sophisticated
gaming machine, an electronic baby-sitter. As the presence of
a keyboard was detected and as the professional horizon
cleared it was thought of in terms of a glorified typewriter
or spreadsheet. It was used mainly as a word processor (and
its existence justified solely on these grounds). The
spreadsheet was the first real application and it demonstrated
the advantages inherent to this new machine (mainly
flexibility and speed).
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