| After 50 years of the ACM,
it's clear that computers have become history. We now live in the Information
Age. This is a lovely situation, but it won't last. We're extremely good
at transforming "ages" into mere history now. The Radio Age, the Aviation
Age, the Atomic Age, the Space Age . . . all of these so-called "ages"
are history. Soon our much-trumpeted "Information Age" will have that same
archaic ring.
The Information Age has accomplished great work during its span on the historical stage, dissolving jobs, transforming industries, frenetically building and destroying great fortunes. Computers have revolutionized the working lives of doctors and artists and clerks, generals and engineers, and politicians. It's delightful to look back and realize how little harm has been done by this transformative tide of computers. By comparison to other ages, we've been lucky. After 50 years development of the Aviation Age, the Luftwaffe had blitzed London, and Dresden was a giant firestorm. For its part, the Atomic Age never even began to live up to its hype (thank goodness). The Information Age has been much gentler with us. We may dare to hope that trend continues. The Information Age doesn't always keep its promises -- what age ever does? -- but computers do change things. The extent and rate of this quiet immolation have been enormous. The victims of obsolescence are sadly little recognized. In fact, many victims don't even know yet that they're victims. The World Wide Web has become the great pop hit of late '90s global culture, but there are no formal archives anywhere for the Web. In five years, there will probably be no way to access a contemporary Web page, and in 50 years, the very idea of a "Web page" will seem as arcane as a magic-lantern slide. There are few archives for computer-generated texts, programs, computer art, or computer-generated cultural activity of any kind. Almost every manifestation of what we call "new media" would be much better described as "temporary media." None of it has any place to hide, no zone of safety from the searing pace of innovation. Everything done by, through, or with a computer is desperately vulnerable. Computers swallow whatever they can touch, and everything they swallow is forced to become as unstable as they are. With the soaring and brutal progress of Moore's Law, computer systems have become a series of ever-faster, ever more complex, and ever more elaborate coffins. In the 1990s, we produce computers that are high-tech sarcophagi with the working lifespan of hamsters. The contemporary computer industry has the production values, and the promotional values, and even the investment structure of the couture industry. This may be why computers are the first truly arcane technology that has become deeply and genuinely glamorous. We are very glamorous now, but we are building on sand, and the quicker we build, the quicker that sand becomes. In 50 years, however, we will have gotten over this. We'll have put it behind us. We'll have developed other obsessions and other problems. And then perhaps we will really know the full extent of the price we have paid for the revolution. |