Before you go betting the farm, the ranch and whatever else you've mortgaged on "computers are here to stay", think back about a hundred years. No computers, no cars, no facebook. But we had horses!
Everyone rode horses. Horses worked the farm. Whatever was around mechanical was measured in horsepower. I think some still do refer to it: "you know what this baby has under the hood?"
The calvary. Camptown races 10 miles long. It was a man and his horse, not his hand held device.
That era is, yes, gone. And it won't be another hundred years, nor fifty, before people will look back, saying to no one in particular, "Remember when everyone had a computer?"
In which case, we are left with having to define what a fad is. Less than fifty, thirty, twentyfive?
I think it depends on the context. In geologic time, a fad would be awesome in its length. In terms of our species, a fad could be a few thousand years. In terms of . . . I think you get the point. I mean, I'm just trying to adjust the spread to balance the action.
What's seems obvious though is that people can oooh computers without knowing what in hell they are ooohing about. It's hard to say what's going on exactly, harder yet to say what will be going on in a faddishly short time. If computers continue to grow smaller, so small that we don't notice them, then I think we could say they have gone away. Your guess may be as good as mine on that. So, are computers here to stay?
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