📰 🔍 Pessimists Archive Newsletter
🖥 That Won’t Work (1983)
This week MIT shared an amazing clip from 1983 of two experts in computer science debating the future of the home PC. The interviewer asked wether the PC would go the way of the Hula Hoop or CB radio.
Michael Dertouzos, head of MIT’s computer science lab retorted that the PC revolution will really kick off: “when we have several million machines interconnected” envisioning a commercial internet that would usher in a “new way of life.” Joseph Weizenbaum, a pioneering AI researcher who created ELIZA, one of the first AI chatbots - visibly irritated - replied “I quite disagree. I think that won’t work.”
Weizenbaum then went on to compare PCs to home movie cameras, which he said required good ideas ( a rare thing) and the same would be true for writing computer programs. The irony here, we now carry very personal PCs in our pockets, that are connected to the internet 24/7 and the biggest social network in the world right now (TikTok) centres around amateur video content.
📇 Work from Office Revolution
Malcolm Gladwell ruffled some feathers by casting working from home in a negative light. In 2005 he held a very different view of the practice. We jumped into the archives to see if we could find anyone critique the rise of working from an office…
We found this fun 1891 article by an office worker - who claimed his familial genes made it an unnatural habitat for him - he advised ‘office men’ go hunting to retain their sanity.
🏴 Self Driving Car
With news of Glasgow making its underground subway fully autonomous, we remembered a report from 1895 in which Glasgow Town Council refused permission to a man who wanted to drive the first horseless carriage in the city.
His reply:
“Those in authority might as well try to beat back the waves of the sea with a broom as try to stem the tide of horseless carriage which are looming in the distance. They are surely coming and ere long they will be running in thousands along our streets.”
👺 Devil’s in the Details
Awful news broke this week of Salman Rushdie having been the victim of an attempted assassination. Thankfully he is alive. The attack saw many people re-examined how ‘The Satanic Verses’ were treated in the past.
The book was also a key justification for Iran censoring the internet in 1996, a good reminder of how the internet has made information censorship close to impossible.
⭐️ Top Tweets
That man from 1981 was so ahead of his time 😂