The year is 1956. You’re a researcher working at International Business Machines, the world’s leading tabulating machine company, which has recently diversified into the brand-new field of electronic computers. You have been tasked with determining for what purposes, exactly, your customers are using IBM’s huge mainframes.
The answer turns out to be pretty simple: computers are for the military, and for the military alone. In 1955, the year before, by far the biggest single revenue source for IBM’s computer division was the SAGE Project, a Defense Department initiative tasking IBM with creating a computer system capable of providing early warnings across the United States should nuclear-armed Soviet bombers attack the country. That brought in $47 million in 1955, and other military projects brought in $35 million. Programmable computers sold to businesses, meanwhile, brought in a paltry $12 million.
You send a memo to your boss explaining that computers’ impact on society will primarily be in giving the US an edge on the Soviets in the Cold War. The impact on the private sector, by contrast, seems minor.
You lean back in your chair, light a cigarette, and ponder the glorious future of the defense-industrial complex.
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