Working Up

by Dwayne Phillips

Most of today’s “computers” are nothing but I/O devices to the cloud. Persons like me who use a computer that is in front of us are rare and disappearing.

Here is a little, historical lesson on computing. A computer has three basic parts:

1. processor
2. memory
3. input/output (I/O)

That’s it folks. Nothing else.

Fast forward to our post(post(post(post)))-modern world. Now you can buy a computer for $35.

That computer is more powerful than…yes, it is time for an old person to tell you that the $35, no-name tablet is more power than took us to the moon in 1969 or some other ancient reference about building the pyramids.

Enough history. Today, that computer has one use: I/O. Sure, you can play Flappy Bird or something on it, but its real use is to access the big computer in the sky, a.k.a., the cloud. It seems that 90% of the computers we have today do the same thing: I/O to the cloud. That leaves 9% of the computers to be the cloud, and a little 1% to be actual computers that old persons like me use as computers.

Sometimes it is odd to be old and actually use a computer.