The decline of computers as a general-purpose technology
Thing is, in the ‘olden days’, the only thing you could do with a home computer was tinker - the job of a computer was to be a computer but little else. And the number of people interested in doing that was small.<p>Today, the job of a computer is everything. Computers are in everything and do everything. They are our interface to the world. Their value is what they enable - writing, tax returns, video consumption, gaming and everything else, not the fact they’re a ‘computer’.<p>For those of us who want a computer to tinker with, we’ve never had it so good. There’s so many more options than there’s ever been for hackable tech. Just because most people don’t want to do that doesn’t mean they’re wrong, it just means they have different priorities.<p>I love the fact I don’t have to muck about with my iPhone to get it to work just as much as I love mucking about with my raspberry pi to get it to work.