It Was One Of The Biggest Events In Business History
It Was One Of The Biggest Events In Business History
By Eli Amdur
It happened on August 12, 1981. The future had arrived.
On that date – 43 years ago this week – IBM introduced its personal computer: the 5150. It wasn’t the first – Tandy, Commodore, and Apple were already at the forefront and gaining market share. But IBM, with a less-than-exciting product, did have one power: superior marketing.
And so, the race was on. IBM – Big Blue – flexed its muscles. They had to. For $5,240 (a whopping $17,857 in today’s money), you bought a big, bulky three-piece unit (CPU, monochrome CRT, and keyboard) with 16K-256K memory, and storage on removable 5-¼” floppy discs. It occupied most of your desktop or kitchen table.
It did almost nothing when viewed through today’s lens, but it was the future, and it had IBM’s name on it – which at the time was a pretty good indicator that it would get us to that future. Low on capability, it was, nonetheless, disruptive technology, and it changed everything..
The purpose of this nostalgic romp through history is to tell another part of that classic story and to draw a comparison to another disruptive modern-day technology. See if you know where this is pointing.
The public’s initial reaction, 1981
Reactions ran the gamut from amazement and awe to puzzlement to curiosity to skepticism to fear. The most prevalent? Fear. More people thought that personal computers were going to kill their jobs and occupations (even whole industries) than anything else. It took decades for that feat to subside, but there’s no one alive today who still think so. But the big lesson was bigger than that. It was, if used productively – as allies, as tools to do our jobs better – PCs would prove to be unparalleled advancements. That’s exactly what happened. Too, they not only didn’t kill jobs, they created over the years, tens of millions of jobs.
Which brings us to AI.
The public’s initial reaction, 2024
History is repeating itself as predictably as it always does. Replace PC with AI and the story is the same. No need to repeat it. Except for one thing; the AI story will be bigger, stronger, and more sweeping.
The IBM story is a good one to learn from, and we shouldn’t take as much time to apply it to AI as we did to that low-capability, disruptive technology of yesteryear.
