> This is the 2026 edition of Ken Olsen: "There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home"

Digging into this:

> In conclusion, there is evidence that Ken Olsen did doubt the need for computers in the home, but the evidence is based primarily on the testimony of David Ahl who was perturbed when the personal computer project he championed at DEC was not supported by Olsen in 1974.

> Olsen’s resistance may have been similar to that expressed by another DEC executive, Gordon Bell. In 1980 Bell thought home terminals would act as gateways to remote computers which would provide appropriate services.

* https://quoteinvestigator.com/2017/09/14/home-computer/

It was supposedly said in 1977: most computers at that time were not small, and so it would not be surprising that people would not expect the general public to desire a large, power-hungry, noise-y apparatus in their house.

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wccrawford an hour ago | parent | next [-]

That's exactly the point. Until recently, AI models that could run on home machines were so bad that it was very hard to imagine anyone wanting to.

And, like the overly large machines of 1977, models are getting faster, leaner, and better. It's happening a lot quicker, though.

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kristov 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

We kinda ended up with terminals connected to mainframes anyway. The terminal being the web browser, and the mainframe being SaS. So it wasn't that far off.

	▲	supermatt an hour ago \| parent [-]
		the network is the computer

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parineum 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

It doesn't really need this much explanation.

People take these quotes out of context all the time. Said in a business context, there was no need, at that time, for someone to have a personal computer.

There's no business justification in 1977 for a personal computer department at a business. It's similar to the gates quote about RAM (I think it was 64KB?).

These statements aren't meant to be forever quotes. Their business plan quotes.

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michaelcampbell 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> It's similar to the gates quote about RAM (I think it was 64KB?)

640, and Bill Gates said he either never said that, or at least never remembered having said it. I think there is no evidence anywhere that he did.

https://www.computerworld.com/article/1563853/the-640k-quote...

	▲	Shorel 11 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		That exact quote? No, never. He said something like: current computers at the time had 64kb of RAM, so the OS was designed with a limit of 640kb, and he believed this would give them 10 years of future proofing. As it happened, that limit was reached much faster, in about 6 years.

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glimshe 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Or maybe he simply made a mistake. Big deal. This doesn't speak negatively of his other achievements.

	▲	shermantanktop 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		He had a long career and presumably many successes, and is fallible like the rest of us. But a half-remembered zinger with no context makes for zippier posts I guess. The early popularity of Minitel, the continued popularity of ssh/tmux, and the web browser itself indicates that bespoke client applications are not the only way. He wasn’t directionally wrong.

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wslh 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

The simple explanation is that predicting the future is generally impossible. It doesn't matter if it's Olsen or anybody else.