Back in 1983 the division of the company I worked for bought an IBM personal computer and hard drive (they were an add-on, were only 10 MB and were about as expensive as the computer.) That was going to be our “competitive edge” or so said one of the senior executives. I inwardly rolled my eyes knowing that the rapid advance in the personal computer world / emerging technology would transform the business world as performance improved and prices dropped. I had already purchased a portable computer (ok…”luggable” would be a better description) that came with word processing software, a spreadsheet, and a database – and 20MB hard drive and for 50% of the costs of the new office computer. To put this in context, there was no Microsoft or MS-DOS.  Unix or CPM were the operating systems de jour. OK … enough history. My point is that there is this underlying belief that technology would make our lives better – especially in the world of business. Continue reading →