Remember the days when the the Internet was new and when we were all spellbound at the idea of having our own desktop computer? Learning the workings of the computer was of prime importance. You had this piece of powerful equipment on your desk and you wanted to explore all the possibilities it presented.
Fast forward to today. Things have most certainly changed. My question is: has everybody realized that it has indeed changed?
Last week, I posted an article about Twitter. I had a couple of commenters give me a hard time about writing about Twitter again. I turned around and blogged about it on my personal blog. And the headline there is completely true. Twitter, and the technology it represents, truly does mark a divide between the old guard of technology and the new guard.
The “Old Guard”
PCMech.com has been around a long time. Back when this site began, the personal computer was the center of the tech universe. Building a PC was very popular because of the higher costs of pre-built. More and more people were using computers and were constantly trying to figure it out. The computer was a bit mysterious. They don’t know how it works, and they’re constantly trying to figure it out. The old guard is primarily concerned with tweaking the computer, fixing it, optimizing it, building it, etc.
This old guard still exists and many of them are readers of PCMech. God bless you guys, too. When I call any of these guys “the old guard”, it isn’t meant out of any disrespect. It is, however, intended to put some things into perspective as I aim to do in this article.
Why Did You Buy Your Computer?
Over the last several weeks, both on this site and in the weekly newsletter, I have opined about the changing nature of technology. I have talked more about social media and sites like Twitter. Some of PCMech’s old time readers have gotten upset with me for this, as the commenter I referenced above did. I include the comment here for easy reference:
Although I’ve been a user of this site for many years, I’m at the point of hitting the delete key over this Twitter hustle. I’m subscribe to the newsletter and use the site because I want computer knowledge,period.Not to be harsh, but I don’t give a rat’s ass about your or anyone else’s musings. Bloggers are under the misconception that they have something important to say, and everyone else wants to hear it. I’m convinced the only people who read these inane blogs, are people who have inane blogs of their own. I’m afraid it’s not your audience who doesn’t “get” Twitter, but you are losing touch with your base.
On my personal blog post, I openly disagreed with this comment and said I was not losing touch with my base, but am simply extending the subject matter while some want to be technology laggards.
When you bought your car, you didn’t buy it so that you could have it in the garage, hood open, constantly working on it and fixing it. No, most likely, you bought it so that you could drive it.
The computer is no different. You bought your computer so that you could USE it to improve your life. So, when I get feedback from people I would call “old guard” who want me to talk about nothing but fixing and repairing PCs, I shrug.
There is a VERY definite reason this site is not called “pc mechanic” anymore. Because that is NOT where technology is heading. In fact, technology is heading AWAY from the idea of a “pc mechanic”.
The New Reality
The computer is now essentially an appliance. You buy it, use it until it breaks, possibly do a few upgrades on your own, then trash it and buy a new one. The desktop PC is now waning and we’re seeing increasing usage of mobile systems and even smartphones. Mobile devices are now used every bit as much, if not more, overall than desktop computers.
Computers are a dime-a-dozen. Nobody really cares any more. The only thing they care about is what they can do with the computer.
More proof of this: more and more of our computer lives are on the Internet. Today, many of the applications we use are on the Internet. So, more and more, the desktop is merely becoming a terminal to get you on the Internet. This is often called “cloud computing”, with the Internet being the cloud. We use the cloud to communicate with people, to learn things, to store our documents and files, to work – EVERYTHING.
So, where does this leave the personal computer? It leaves it in a pivotal, but much less important role. We use it every day. But, we also use our television and our refrigerator every day. You don’t see people surfing the Internet looking for information on how to tweak their TV or their fridge.
Reality Check
The reason some get upset when I talk about things like Twitter is because we begin to shake the foundation again. The desktop computer and everything focusing on that is familiar territory. It is understood. And there is a certain security to being in control of your own computer. Once you enter the realm of the Internet, you lose some of that control. Things are spread out and seemingly more confusing.
This is, however, the new reality.
PCMech will continue to cater to people who wish to tweak their computers. But, PCMech is not going to doom itself to a future of looking inward at the circuitry and pathways of the desktop computer. The technology world is much bigger than the desktop computer, and things are most definitely evolving away from the desktop.
When I speak about Twitter, it isn’t for Twitter’s sake. Twitter is simply representative of the tidal wave of new technology today. Social media, web 2.0, and web-based software and services are the current forefront of technology. And, again, it all boils down to what you can do with your computer to improve your life.
As Lisa commented on my other blog:
The medium ain’t the message, not even the holy PC. It’s what we do with it. Mine facilitates work, social interaction, family closeness, and information gathering. Coverage of anything which adds to that is welcome.
People whining like your correspondent sound like the old man on his front porch saying “Hmmph! Kids today!” Stenosis of the brain, my friend.
I couldn’t agree more.
So, you can either be resistant to change, or you can accept it and put yourself at the forefront. You can either have a knee jerk reaction and dismiss new things that come down the pike as “somebody else’s musings”, or you can embrace it and learn from it. My job, as a blogger, is to introduce my readers to new technology and new ways to use technology. My job is not to focus my reader’s attention on something that is dwindling in importance level in the new tech world.
I hope my little editorial here has been interesting. 
Like what you read?
If so, please join over 28,000 people who receive our exclusive weekly newsletter and computer tips, and get FREE COPIES of 5 eBooks we created, as our gift to you for subscribing. Just enter your name and email below:
I just read the article. “The desktop is so yesterday”. Would you say learning to repair computers is a waste of time?
I agree that there are more things to computers than just email and composing something to be sent someplace.
But I feel that some of us aren’t interested in Twitter, Facebook and other such social networks because we’re afraid of employers, hackers and other such “resident evil” in the world trying to come after identities.
Also some of us don’t want to be found by people from past lives (nothing to hide) just people we didn’t enjoy back then and don’t want to reconnect to now.
Just my humble opinion.
Times change, people change, technology changes and trends come and go. The “in” thing right now is social media…whatever that means. Next year, hell, next week it might be something different.
David is a businessman, and PCMech is his business. At the end of the day, PCMech is a vehicle with which he can pay his mortgage and feed his family. If the vehicle has to be steered in a different direction to keep the clicks and eyeballs coming, then why not.
For the “Old Guard” who doesn’t like it, start your own site and focus on whatever it is you feel is important. That’s the beauy of the Internet today…it’s very easy for anyone to speak their minds…regardless of how obscure or irrelevant.
Adapt or die…it’s the way it’s always been and will always be.
Store bought boxes and laptops are great for the masses, just don’t cry in your beer over loosing 4 years worth of family photos when the box takes a hike because the parts were selected based on price/profit margin, not for quality. I could care less about twitter. Probably terrific for those who live in a totally virtual world, you see these living dead in the malls, glued to their cell phones and multimedia player dejour, drinking their breakfast treat mongo sized cola and stumbling into walls and garbage cans.
The main part of this post I disagree with is the title.
Sure, mobile devices are a ‘part’ of the future, but they are not ‘the’ future. Well, at least not the immediate future. When you can use your mobile device to play high end games, burn/watch Blu-ray discs and create an epic masterpiece or website using Photoshop and Dreamweaver, then we can say mobile devices are the future. But they are definitely not ‘the’ future just yet.
Also, you can’t really compare computers against TV’s and fridges. TV’s have a main purpose/use, as do fridges. But computers have a far greater number of uses than a TV or fridge ever will. And because you can’t really ‘tweak out’ a fridge, of course nobody is going to sit around trying to find out how to do it. A car on the other hand is a far better example, as you can tweak out a car in numerous ways, much like a computer.
The desktop computer is in as much an important role today as ever. For without it, Web 2.0 wouldn’t even be here, now would it? Mobile devices will become more advanced and utilize much of the power the Internet has to offer, but in my opinion the statement that the desktop computer is ‘SO yesterday’ is way off the mark. Until such times as mobile devices can do the same if not more than a desktop computer, the desktop/laptop will never die and will live on in one way or another.
The title was, admittedly, provocative.
haha You think?
Just think.. no desktop would mean no 600Mb of RAM used for FF! LOL
Until now, since the great move from dial up to broadband of the early 1990′s, the Internet has been a pipeline for innovation, community interaction (twitter, IM, group mail, etc.), and commerce. I believe that 2009 will be known as the Year of the Cap. The broadband CAP coupled with current economic conditions just might be enough to push all this innovation into the dung heaps of the virtual world with people making decisions like Do I pay for my cap overages this month or my home heating bill ???
I never knew pcmech was a blog now. And I personally have no problem with you liking twitter or whatever else, but why do you feel the need to force feed it to us? Heck, Ms doesn’t try to force windows on us as much as that. People say, it’s your site. True, and I understand that, but what gets me is, if you don’t want an honest answer, then don’t ask for an opinion. You asked people what they wanted to see on the site, and it seems like the majority agreed that twitter was being mentioned too much. What do you do with that…you just toss it aside and claim we’re just old timers. Then why the heck did you ask me?
I’m not force feeding anything. Twitter is just an example. I have probably posted 4 or 5 posts max about Twitter on this site, out of 3600+ articles.
Being fairly new to PCMech, the site, I am surprised by the responses. What did PCMech used to be? It seems it must have been more “meat and potatoes” rather than “cotton candy” at one time. Is that what made it great? Or was it something else?
PCMech used to be called “pc mechanic”. And that’s what we talked about primarily: fixing, building, repairing PCs. So, we have a lot of content here, indexed in search engines, which brings people interested in those subjects here to PCMech. However, tech has evolved since this site started, and hence so has PCMech.
I would have to agree that buying a computer and using it is more ideal today than building and tweaking. The only time I build a PC is if I have some specialized need in which I can build cheaper than buying a pre-existing computer or plan to install special components. There will always be a market for building computers among gamers, tweakers, and PC enthusiasts, but for the majority of people there is no benefit in doing so.
I stumbled(Google) upon PCMech while trying to solve a problem with my computer, not to find out about Twitter.
I am sure that is where the bulk of your readers originated from. I am sure none of us want to influence your search for what makes you happy, but I will continue to search for a source that helps me improve my ability to “tweak” my pc. I am new to PCMech, so I am sure that you have probably covered any problem I might have in earlier newsletters. I can understand that you must be bored going over the same issues again and again…but I hope that you still retain a little satisfaction from helping others fix these sometimes frustrating machines.
Don’t worry, Ken. We will always talk about computers and tweaking them. I’m simply not going to limit myself to that subject.
Whilst I agree with your stance in supporting the web 2.0 phenomenon I have an incling that you might be going a bit slightly overboard on this matter:
Me; I’m both an “old guard” person and a forefront person: I build and sell a limited number of desktop computers for people in the UK – And if the desktop computer were yesterday’s appliance I would have no customers; as the “old guard” would be building and tweaking their own, and everyone else would be buying laptops, iPhones, and Viewtys, etc.
If indeed the trend continues in the way that you say it is going then it would appear that in a few years we’ll be left with a majority of people with mobile devices and laptops, utterly clueless as to their workings, and the “old guard” still tweaking and maintaining their desktops.
In reality, though, it’s just not like that: The users aren’t splitting into two factions. The truth would appear to be that some people have become left behind to a varying extent due to the pace of change, and still prefer the old ways you described without perhaps even realising that the internet is evolving. Others such as myself have embraced the web 2.0 phenomenon, and all credit to PCMech with regard to this, while still holding on to the desktop and the technical side of things. Yet others may well indeed be binning their desktops and replacing them with devices which are more attuned to their highly mobile lifestyle.
- That’s how I envision the present. I’d hate to see desktops become obsolete; even in the case of handheld mobile devices accomplishing everything that a desktop machine is capable of.
And then there’s the Linux people: Although (I’ve knocked Linux in the past, one of the great things about most of the thousands of different Linux distros is that, unlike Vista and its subsequent M$ followings; it doesn’t require new advanced hardware to run on. Even I; a former Linuxphobe, have run Linux on old retired boxes: P1′s etc. (Hidden away in a cupboard somewhere I have a box I partly cannibalised from what was left of my old P4 box after a failed BIOS flash, with an older version of Ubuntu installed on it.
Desktops are in no danger of extinction; they’re just giving way to the other types of devices that have been made available…And with that in mind there will always be desktop users; some if not most of whom will be unsure or clueless of how they work – That is where the “old guard” will have their niche; repairing and optimising those user’s desktops as well as their own.
In 10 years time the desktop might begin to face extinction possibly; though I doubt it. I think it’ll just change its role even more to a home entertainments internet connected media centre as well as continuing to become more powerful. I can’t envisage gamers ditching their desktops in favour of the latest iPhone in 10 years time; even if Apple have managed to make one that doesn’t disintegrate (1), can actually run all the Apps built for it (2), and isn’t remote – controlled by Steve Jobs as to what you can and can’t run on it. (3) : If Apple even still exist by then; providing Steve Jobs doesn’t destroy it through his greed and control-freak mentality.
Heck I still build premium models using the AMD Athlon X2 – I even use one myself in my main desktop computer which I’m writing this on now. I go to an office somewhere and what do I see? Desktops. I went to a hospital the other week and saw a machine running a P3 and a 12GB 5400RPM IDE HDD with a 16MB graphics upgrade! They’re still out there. I rebuilt a single-core desktop machine using a Gigabyte motherbord and fitting a dual-core processor only a month or so ago for a customer. (I don’t normally do rebuilds; but this was a one-off.) the desktop’s not dead or dying out; just a little less popular than it once was.
I agree with David. Although I do not presently use or know about Twitter, or much about blogging for that matter I will learn about for the simple reason that it may be a source of profit for my soon to be internet business.
I really liked the direction that Sharron took. The desktop computer will always have its niche, whether its a box or a hole in the wall. What it was designed to do is now being paired down and divvied up among various devices, but there are a host of things that a personal desktop computer can still do that no other device can. There are many resource intensive programs that have a long way to go before they ever get a web based counterpart.
Graphic design, games, very heavy number crunching and data compilation are just a few examples of what the PC is good at doing. With the PC, you can harness the full strength of some frankly darned powerful hardware to do the job.
When it comes to gaming, some people are hailing the death of PC games and the ultimate takeover of the console. There are a few reasons why this doesn’t make a lick of sense. First, never will the budget conscious gamer shell out a few hundred bucks on a console that will be outstripped by a cheaper video card in 6 months or less. Second, your PC only requires upgrades to keep it alive for gaming, and each of those will tend to cost less than a full console, AND can sustain itself for longer than the life of said console. Third, see how confident console gamers are of Microsoft when they release a new system. The XBox 360 destroyed a valuable consumer base for them. Sure, they might just go buy the next Playstation, but not all of them will.
For heavy data compilation, you really need the horsepower of a PC to get it done in an efficient amount of time. In my business, we are compiling, splitting, cleaning, sorting and batching information all day long, and go through several gigabytes worth of data in a day. No mobile device has yest to come CLOSE to the power necessary for such a task, and the job still requires a huge amount of screen real estate.
Graphic design…well, enough said. You as a Mac guy should know where this point is headed.
The whole point is that the role of the PC is merely being optimized. So yesterday? Eh, maybe as we once knew them, but now PCs are being refined. As that happens, they will get better and better at what they do, being designed for fewer purposes but growing ever more capable in those purposes. As that happens, it will further entrench itself in our world of tech. Sorry, the iPhone just can’t keep up in this arena, and never will.
David can write about any new cloud, software, hardware technology he well pleases and push it to his readers. Whoever is complaining about him asking his readers to “follow” him on twitter then get offline and buy a book about fixing computers and hit yourself with it. The same way you don’t want to read his tweets, we don’t want to read your bitching.
On a different note, the tablet computer is going to become the middle ground between mobile and desktop. So you just wait. Don’t forget to follow David on tweeter: http://twitter.com/davidrisley
Interesting points of view from everyone but I fail to see how not embracing Twitter makes one the Old Guard and having uses for a desktop pc makes you resitant to change. Where does attending to ones own needs and wants fit into the picture. I am a busy person, with much that has to be done during the day, I don’t care to be bombarded with “what are you doing” hundreds of times throughout the day. Nor do I care to know what others are doing all the time. Hence no cell phone for personal use, no blogs, Facebook or Twitter. I prefer real live connections on a looked forward to seeing you basis. I also don’t want a bunch of strangers intruding on my day, not ever, at least not more than they do in the course of my work. I admire those who find new uses for these social networking tools but don’t think it is a sign of resistance if the tools are not appropriate oran enhancement to ones life. A lot sounds like social pressure to accept this excessive need to be always connected to anybody. Tweaking pc’s is not for everyone,nor is social networking and it’s respectful if we understand that. I am just grateful that PCMech was available when I was so interested and needed more knowledge regarding pc’s and the samegoes for the new techno advances, but I don’t quite understand the for or against stances, we can choose what we want at the moment…thank goodness for choices.
This article has widened my view on what one should be doing with the emerging technology…
I agree with David. thank for sharing.