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Cyhist Apr 3 1997 F
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Date: Thu, 3 Apr 1997 12:12:57 -0800
Reply-To: "CYHIST Community Memory: Discussion list on the History of
Cyberspace" <CYHIST@MAELSTROM.STJOHNS.EDU> Sender: "CYHIST Community Memory: Discussion list on the History of
Cyberspace" <CYHIST@MAELSTROM.STJOHNS.EDU> From: "Mark Stahlman (via RadioMail)" <stahlman@RADIOMAIL.NET>
Subject: Re: RE If Ritchie had had Gates' business accument
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Community Memory: Discussion List on the History of Cyberspace ______________________________________________________________________
Folks:
But, how quickly we forget -- a multitasking OS *was* put forward on a very low cost box to rival MS-DOS -- Amiga-DOS. But, of course, for many reasons (including very low-priced consumer market targetting and lack of clones) this effort also ultimately failed.
As the last Wall Street analyst to follow Commodore (and, perhaps, the last naive shill to inflate their stock), I had a chance to ponder their demise as well as their successes. It turns out that the only market where the Amiga ever really took hold was among German and British high-school boys. Why?
I suspect that the social conditions in these countries -- particularly the support for learning about technology generated by both family and school had much to do with it -- was far more important than the oft-cited stories about marketing prowess in Europe and missteps in the U.S. By the 1980's, the ethos to hack to the guts of a computer was simply not an important factor in the social life of American (or Japanese or . . .) teenage boys.
No kid who really wanted to understand computing would have spent five minutes with MS-DOS (or MAC-OS) if Amiga-DOS (a multimedia/network UNIX-derivative) was available. Once again, the appropriateness of the technology to the social circumstances seems to be one of the keys to market success.
This implies that a purely technology-oriented history is perhaps an account of events but hardly a history at all.
Mark Stahlman
New Media Associates
New York City
newmedia@mcimail.com
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Reply-To: "CYHIST Community Memory: Discussion list on the History of
Cyberspace" <CYHIST@MAELSTROM.STJOHNS.EDU> Sender: "CYHIST Community Memory: Discussion list on the History of
Cyberspace" <CYHIST@MAELSTROM.STJOHNS.EDU> From: "Mark Stahlman (via RadioMail)" <stahlman@RADIOMAIL.NET>
Subject: Re: RE If Ritchie had had Gates' business accument
______________________________________________________________________
Community Memory: Discussion List on the History of Cyberspace ______________________________________________________________________
Folks:
But, how quickly we forget -- a multitasking OS *was* put forward on a very low cost box to rival MS-DOS -- Amiga-DOS. But, of course, for many reasons (including very low-priced consumer market targetting and lack of clones) this effort also ultimately failed.
As the last Wall Street analyst to follow Commodore (and, perhaps, the last naive shill to inflate their stock), I had a chance to ponder their demise as well as their successes. It turns out that the only market where the Amiga ever really took hold was among German and British high-school boys. Why?
I suspect that the social conditions in these countries -- particularly the support for learning about technology generated by both family and school had much to do with it -- was far more important than the oft-cited stories about marketing prowess in Europe and missteps in the U.S. By the 1980's, the ethos to hack to the guts of a computer was simply not an important factor in the social life of American (or Japanese or . . .) teenage boys.
No kid who really wanted to understand computing would have spent five minutes with MS-DOS (or MAC-OS) if Amiga-DOS (a multimedia/network UNIX-derivative) was available. Once again, the appropriateness of the technology to the social circumstances seems to be one of the keys to market success.
This implies that a purely technology-oriented history is perhaps an account of events but hardly a history at all.
Mark Stahlman
New Media Associates
New York City
newmedia@mcimail.com
______________________________________________________________________
