After 30 years, IBM says PC going way of vacuum tube and typewriter

August 11, 2011 | Source: Network World

IBM CTO Mark Dean, one of a dozen IBM engineers who designed the first PC unveiled Aug. 12, 1981, says PCs are “going the way of the vacuum tube, typewriter, vinyl records, CRT and incandescent light bulbs.”

Dean’s remarks continue a debate over whether we are now in a so-called “post-PC” era, in which smartphones and tablets are replacing desktops and laptops.

“PCs are being replaced at the center of computing not by another type of device — though there’s plenty of excitement about smartphones and tablets — but by new ideas about the role that computing can play in progress,” Dean says. “These days, it’s becoming clear that innovation flourishes best not on devices but in the social spaces between them, where people and ideas meet and interact. It is there that computing can have the most powerful impact on economy, society, and people’s lives.”