Blog
Knol

competitive position, and therefore their interests will be in having as level as possible a field of competition, less they can tilt it in their favor. That’s exactly what happened with personal computers, where several PC companies ended up in strong positions. However, they didn’t manage to avoid the first rule altogether as the standards they relied on took the names of Intel and Microsoft, now dominating as much as their predecessors, but in a new field.

This allows one to recognize the second evolutionary trait as the emergence of standards. Standards are agreements across some domain that levels the competitive field. In essence, companies agree to sacrifice some of their margin of maneuver so that the entire market progresses in a way beneficial to them individually. They either do this of their own volition, to avoid having one of them eliminate the others, or they do it under pressure from their customers, who want to avoid depending on a single source. In any case, they give up on the capability to accumulate superior profits that only a dominant position can provide in the long term.

Standards can be de facto (emerging), or de jure (the result of committee work). In the case of personal computers, the microprocessors and software standards ended up being set by two companies. The computer manufacturers had successfully avoided a dominating computer manufacturer. However, they had created Intel and Microsoft in the process. These companies became dominant in their own areas and took with them most of the profit of that industry. This lesson would not be lost on personal electronic devices manufacturers, who would carry computer history to multi-level selection.

Epochs of Computer Evolution

Over the last century, the evolution of computer technology can be assessed through four epochs following a prologue period in which the computer species actually emerged in a recognizable lineage. This prologue period is concerned with the development of the basic technologies of electronic components, circuits and memory systems that allowed the realization of stored-program computing systems. We suggest that this progression is best presented as a series of mutation events relative to the mechanical computing devices that had gone before.

The first real epoch of computers is the mainframe era. This involved the construction of large machines with large price tags. Moreover, the mainframe era entailed the first division of labor between the hardware that comprises the anatomical entities that are computers and the software that actually effects their physiological manifestations. Interestingly enough, during the mainframe era the development of software outpaced the development of hardware such that the general cognitive abilities of large mainframes was extremely advanced, even by current standards that are well along the computers’ evolutionary ascent. The software capabilities of early mainframes, if mapped into current hardware architectures, make one consider what the evolutionary outcome might have been if dinosaurs, in addition to evolving into extremely large organisms, had similarly developed enhanced brain sizes as well; perhaps to the relative brain size of humans. Extremely large, powerful individuals with well developed cognitive abilities; they might have given Homo sapiens a run for their money. Certainly, they would have made for truly industrial strength National Football League franchises.

The second epoch is the mini-computer era. This period was induced with the miniaturization of large sections of mainframe computers through the use of integrated circuits. This transition from the mainframe to the mini-computer is viewed as an adaptation transition rather than a true mutational event. With this transition, the mainframe did not lapse into extinction, largely because

Book available at Midori Press (regular)
Book available at Midori Press (signed)
Book available at Amazon (regular)