Well, it didn't do well in the US or the UK. It was quite popular in Japan (and, I understand, fairly successful in South America and various parts of continental Europe.)

Very good points!

I might disagree, mildly. I agree that culture modifies on a different time scale (punctuated equillibrium, via Stephen Jay Gould and Niles Eldregde, aside), and across lineages, rather than "down through them". Such is not subject to any serious debate.

I would be more vigorous, however, in asserting that the biological/cultural metaphor has not been systematically explored with seriousness.

For indications (from "celebrity academicians", instead of "lil' ole me") that this is true, please see Daniel Dennett's book "Darwin's Dangerous Idea", and especially the chapter "Taking Memes Seriously", and Paul Ehrlich's "Human Natures" (just search the index/bibliography of this latter book for the authors and references to "Cavalli-Sforza" and "Marcus Feldman". Ehrlich, essentially, claims that, as of 1995, Sforza and Feldman (July, 1980; my year and month of birth) are the authority on mathematical models of cultural exchange. My review of this latter work is incomplete, but I have perused it.).

Also note that the MODERN proposal of memes has been somewhat withdrawn. In recent years Dawkins has referred to it as more of a metaphor than an actual proposal. Though he supports other people's efforts to attempt such theoretical structures, he does not seem to devote his time or efforts (or bona fides) to this program.

Also note, the meme does not start and stop with Dawkins. Richard Semon had some cersion of the meme, before the neuron theory was even accepted (see "Richard Semon; Forgotten and Neglected Pioneers ... ", by Daniel Shacter (? I think?). This work was even treated with some seriousness by Bertrand Russel in his book ("Theory of Mind" or "Theory of Memory", or some such title? circa 1920s or 1910s).

Older, still, than that, are Darwin's notebooks, specifically his M and N notebooks (notes on Mind and Materialism. Barrett et al. 1989, is a big thick hardcover version that is mostly complete. They are all available on-line now.). His naive writings, completely in decade or so following his return from the Beagle voyage, echo a lot of what his father and grandfather had said about "social heredity"--though that term would not have been used by him. I mention it, only in passing, as it has serious bearing upon the modern conception of self, that humanity has developed. The true roots of "memetics" is probably much older.

I point to Aristotle, an to a lesser extent, Plato. Richard Sorabji is one of the authorities on Aristotle's "Memory and Reminiscence"; the other is a younger academic? Dutch I think? My memory, ironically, fails me right now. Nevertheless, I think if Aristotle had ever viewed a Pascaline, a Antikytheria, a Coligne Calendar, or a Ferrite Core/Bead RAM, he would have only had to slightly alter this document to make it the reigning authority, for all time, on the subject of memory.

And of course, we might rightly call it the founding document of the field of Memetics.

I'm a fan of memetics - I believe there is explanatory power in the idea of memes.

Going back to your earlier post, you suggest taking a list of candidate machines and tabulating their various characteristics, in order to get some better understanding of how they stack up as candidates and of the developmental timeline of the personal computer. I think this is a good suggestion (although I don't propose to act on it!) - I did post a list of candidates and a link to some related lists, which might act as starting points.

Thanks rwiker

I popped online ot post as I have been absent a week or a month, precisely beacuse of this thread and the recent news. I read it in the NY Times, but have been busy with politics (ugggh; the provincial and pedestrian variety! The WORST KIND, since the stakes are so low!) and couldn't get a moment to post.

Here are the links. While searching for said links, I noted that Minsky died as well! How could I have missed that news!

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/26/busin ... .html?_r=0

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/28/busin ... at-88.html

Was Minsky one of the guys at the Dartmouth Summer conference on AI; I mean, that 1950s conference that is widely considered the birth of the field (excluding, of course, those who feel that Turing birthed the field!)?

Again, was Minsky at that early radio conference that Dennett mentions in his book "Darwins Dangerous Idea"? The one where a young Chomsky got his start? I read too much, and forget stuff. Here is original document, I think; I've never read it. But, it is considered by some to be a pivotal point in our undertsanding of ntural and artificial languages. (1956). "Three models for the description of language" (PDF). IRE Transactions on Information Theory (PGIT) 2: 113–124. https://chomsky.info/wp-content/uploads/195609-.pdf

Furthermore, and personally, in summation, I am somewhat proud to be a Northeastern US, liberal, intellectual. For all our faults, this side of "the pond", we have advanced some very interesting ideas these past 2 or 3 hundred years. And Dartmouth was, for some time, a hotbed of optical research, at a time when the US needed such (Ames and Proctor, Journal of the Optical Society of America, publications circa 1923, points to this fact. Founders of the Dartmouth Eye Institute, now defunct and rolled into other departments by University Administration.)

I have found two researchers (besides the ancient Egyptian scultpture "Le Scribe Acroupi", the Seated Scribe, which can't possibly be considered functional lenses, in the modern sense), total, that profess to reproduce functional scale models of the human eye dioptrics; one from Dartmouth, by G.H Gliddon (circa 1920s; also associated with Rochester NY schools, another hotbed of optical research in the "inter-war" years.). And one from a more recent researcher, Pier-Gobbi. Neither has proposed a 1:1 ratio of life to scale model size relationship, or a 1:1 ratio of shape of lenses. Both lack the interesting glasses to effect a successful implementation of such a design. Luckily, such glasses/crystals do exist. The experiment can be tried and its value can be assessed. (When I ran for Congress (Independent, VT) in 2014, instead of knocking on doors and seeking support and votes, I thumbed my way down to Boston and had a look at some of the declassified Harvard Optical Laboratory research papers from the WWII era. One, in particular, discussed the working of Optical Fluorite for Apochromatic lenses, for aerial photography. Several other such documents described the methods of polishing and cutting in more detail. Fascinating stuff, but I really could have used the money from that "Congress thingy", job! Ha ha!).

Well, I've drifted far afield from even this OT. I am OT from the OT post! How personal can computers become? Strong AI seems pretty darn personal! Friendly, even? Though, possibly, they might become a "fre-nemy", as the kids nowadays say? How personal have they been in the past? Is the "Seated Scribe" a Personal Computer, designed to ward off robbers/invaders who would see the flash of a torch, reflected back at them, through quartz crystal corneas, and reflected back from copper retinas? I think this is a stretch, but you would probably have to ask the dead pharaohs what their intentions truly were.

So, with regard to my first post, and acknowledging, more completely, Biged's very real and pertinent concerns about methods and epistemology in sociological evolution (i.e. evolution of ideas and/or evolution of cultural artifacts), here are a few comments.

I can think of two VERY difficult obstacles to the biological/cultural metaphor, with regard to the actual application of cladistics ("parsimonious, tree-drawing") to the question at hand. There are more difficulties, to be sure, but these two are most pressing in my mind (and I am on public computers, with an hour and a half left, so I best hurry!).

1) The analogy and homology distinction. Bees and birds both have wings, and both fly. But the evolutionary history of bees' wings and birds' wings are distinct. They are analogous structures, but not homologous. This distinction might be superficial, even in our biological discussions; but virtually NO biologists would ever say so, or admit it out loud. (As far as I know, I am the exception. I think the philosopher Dennett and Gould, were he still with us, would deign to dicuss the matter, but few others would see the merit. Perhaps Ruse and Ghiselin and Hull and Lloyd and Thompson?).

A more accurate observation is that bees' wings and birds' wings are both made of eukaryotic cells and take shape through the normal developmental processes of the Kingdom Animalia. In this sense, they are the same structures with the same evolutionary history. A stretch? YES! YOU BET! But, I note, NOT FALSE! ( a standard biological narrative is that Phylum Arthropoda and Phylum Chordata split about the time of the Cambrian Explosion, and never the twain shall meet!)

And of course, given the "endosymbiotic theory" even these cells and the cells of bacteria are the same thing, and not analogous; undoubtedly we may stretch the metaphor as far as we wish, perhaps even to the periodic crystals of mineral species and the aperiodic crystals of DNA!

However, ALL practical biologists (including me) acknowledge the GENERAL truth--and especially the utility--of acknowledging the reality of homologous structures, their "nearness" in historical generation and familial relationship, and the utility of constructing trees while trying to reconstruct a narrative of "what happened". It is a best guess. History is messy, and historical sciences are messy. That is just an inherent, unavoidable truth.

2) Corporate history. Of course, there is the corporate history in the sense of public relations, advertising and.or patent legal disputes. People have a REAL economic interest in distorting the "who first" question and answer. One of the good things about brief periods of stagnation in the technological development of computers, is it allows people to stop, and think, and take stock of what has occurred. It actually gives intelligent people (you and me and us) a chance to stop and objectively view the important innovations, absent any political or economic motives. We get to act as historians do (please, put aside your favorite Atari and/or Nintendo, or Commodore 64, and view this question objectively--to the extent that the question can even be posed in a precise enough fashion to allow us to answer it!).

But there are several other aspects to corporate history that obscures our understanding of the question. Individuals can leave one corporation and go to another, taking ideas with them. ideas can be copied from one corporate product to another, with relative ease, and with minimal legal legerdemain (sure, they fight over it in court, but by the time its settled there, the market "is made", and something else is the "hot item".).

Did the university feed the idea? Generate it? The university made the mind, and the mind made the product? Or did the corporate stewardship of this "made-mind", cultivate the products of said mind? What about luck? Meticulous research? Creativity? Social fertilization. All of these things are incredibly important factors. And what about the people who have the idea, but just can't "reduce to practice". What about those that "reduce to practice" but can't market it, or can't produce them cheap enough to market it?

I am running out of steam on this thread, but you can see I could go on for weeks. There is fertile room here for a long discussion, but a cladistic tree of computer history--personal or otherwise--is very possible and desirable, in my view.

I have found several online (google image search "cladistic tree computer" and "evolution personal computer" or some such search. Here is at least one link that was useful; especially 1980's era poster by Gordon Bell; http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/ ... umPubs.htm )

See also here especially the final image, seen below. I think I've read that this one doesn't do justice to non-USA contributions.

OK, one last thing today, I have to be quick, though (Next time I get an online computer, I will try to read this whole thread; all 6 pages or so!).

A minimal definition is needed. What is a personal computer?

Now, we might wish to also have a "maximal definition", though now I am just "making up terms" for the fun of it. This second definition could be "That thing which is undeniably a personal computer".

The minimal definition is somewhat more problematic. As mentioned earlier, do we count a Coligny Calendar or a Antikytheria Mechanism? How about the Nurenmberg Egg? The Marine Chronometer?

I see, we want "general purpose computing"? Then the pascaline is ruled out, and probably Jacquard's loom too. How about Babbage, who thought of it, but couldn't build it?

And Michelson's Analog computer? Do we rule this out? I think, at the very least Analog and Digital computer are separate "clades"; like bees' wings and birds' wings.

But what about electronic versus mechanical versus electro-mechnical? How do we handle this "evolution"--i.e. change over time--simultaneous, and concurrent and cross-fertilizing with the analog versus digital evolution?

I think the term "personal" is problematic, as all of these devices are utilized by "persons"; no personal computer seems to require horses or dogs or pigs or stones or dirt in order to function.

If by personal we mean, commercially successful, then we have a benchmark; or, rather, we might define a benchmark. Would it be arbitrary? How "affordable" is "affordable"? In order to be personal, it must be affordable?

Can I deny Apple and IBM-clones the glory of first PC, AND deny it also, to Intel and the F-14 Tomcat? Arguably, yes. Woz had 6502 from "The Jar". The Famous and Slightly Infamous, Holy Jar of 6502-Goodness!

I think by personal we generally mean something about being owned or operated or used by one person. Early machines needed a team of operators; larger machines were intended to serve the needs of several users.

For a maximal definition, I think we should use the IBM PC 5150
- intended for interactive use by one person
- affordable for one person to buy
- self contained product including keyboard and screen and persistent storage
- modest power supply needs, no special cooling needs
- general purpose computer programmable by the user
- allows for applications to be used by a non-programming user
- user need not be an engineer or computer scientist
- commercially produced and commercially successful
- uses a microprocessor as the CPU

Ah, an obvious follow-on from the above: the trinity from 1977 also fit all the above facts.
- Commodore PET
- Apple ][
- TRS-80

I would argue that the IBM PC (5150) itself didn't actually meet some of those criteria: It was VERY expensive (it cost as much as a small car, as I remember; more expensive than any other home / personal computer from the same era), and it didn't come with everything included: the screen and keyboard were separate items, as well as the display controller (Monochrome or CGA). Not to mention PC-DOS was also a separate purchase.

Which brings us to an item you may want to add to your list: general availability. You couldn't just go to the store and buy an IBM PC; you had to go to an Authorized Reseller (who would make sure your order would have all those required items added, and maybe assemble your system for you once it arrived at your office). As far as I remember, those resellers would usually not even talk to you unless you represented a company.

===Jac

Hmm, interesting... I wouldn't want to put too much emphasis on availability because of course some earlier machines had limited availability. But it's a good point that, initially, only a business might be able to buy one. That might mean we end up with several dates for each machine
- when announced
- when launched
- when generally available

(As for the 1977 trio, I think the TRS-80 was much the last to be announced, but they all became available at a similar time.)

I've updated my list post earlier in this thread to add a somewhat related, but certainly interesting article by Ken Shirriff on "The Surprising Story of the First Microprocessors". Ken has previously written on this topic on his blog, which is always a good read. (Elsewhere, in commenting on Ken's article, Jac has mentioned two other related links: 1, 2.)

I seem to recall a story of someone with plenty of dough who in the late 60s had a PDP-8 in an upscale apartment, specifically for personal use.

I think decades prior to that, if a guy married a computer, he'd say he had a personal computer.

You might mean the LINC - that's in my list post.