| The computer industry is the biggest money loser in history. General Electric lost around |
| $ 1,000,000,000 before giving up its computer manufacturing operation. Buyers of computers have |
| also suffered heavily. TWA sued Burroughs for $ 70,000,000 damages after buying their equipment. |
| The people in the industry have little idea how dishonest they are being, because within the |
| 5 | industry there is widespread ignorance about computers and their use. People in the industry take a |
| pride in being ignorant about computers, and at computer conferences and in text books they are |
| encouraged to remain so. Computer salesmen sell f. 100,000 machines, about which they are more or |
| less ignorant , to customers who are even more ignorant. The customer buys a computer as a prestige |
| symbol even though he may think he is buying it for its use, and when it fails to do the job he keeps |
| 10 | quiet about its failure so as to keep the prestige. |
| When an angry customer complains to you , the manufacturer, about the rotten machine you have |
| delivered (or should I say partly delivered, as is more often the case), you have to keep him guessing |
| for a year, until the guarantee runs out. The first, almost routine, step is to tell him you have serious |
| doubts about the programming team he has put to work on the machine, but you will be very willing |
| 15 | to help by giving them some training, on his premises or yours. |
| When the two sets of programmers meet for the training ceremony, they can be relied on to fight |
| (programmers are the cowboys of this age, used to shooting from the hip), and neither you nor your |
| customer will be able to see much through the dust for six months or more. Finally a sort of |
| compromise is reached , and either some of your programmers or some of your customer's are fired |
| 20 | as scapegoats. The programming is restarted, and after a further four months or so attention begins |
| to move from the programming problems ("Surely all three programming teams couldn't have been |
| incompetent!") to the machine, which was a mess from the start. |
| |
| The Spectator, February 1974 |
