With all due respect to your dad, while I agree with him that there's a lot more to the CFO's sudden resignation than meets the eye, I don't totally agree with him about the true meaning of Gerstner's statement or the oncoming retrenchment of the PC industry.
What Gerstner was signaling is that new products will evolve that meet new demands - particularly internet demands. Just consider this. Most colleges require students to be computer literate. For example, for several years, Dartmouth required students to have their own computer when they arrive as freshmen. An overwhelming number of grade schools, and even more high schools, are preparing their students for the dependency we all will soon have on computers in all aspects of life. Surfing the internet is not only a major research tool used by grade schoolers and above, but PC's are being installed in libraries all over America to replace other more conventional research tools.
In short, an entire generation of Americans will soon reach adulthood and will require PC's to go on with their every day lives and jobs. What these machines will wind up looking like is what Gerstner was alluding to. It's what the entire industry is wrestling with right now in order to be on the cutting edge of future demand.
Frankly, the danger I see is that dependency on computers may create problems in future research where basic knowledge, overlooked in computer-dependent schooling, may prevent future graduates from understanding basic math, practical physics and other concepts because in their earlier and formative years in the educational system computers worked the formulae that many of us had to labor through with nothing other than pencil and paper and an occasional use of a slide rule. |
