Shmuel is right, and this thread is symptomatic. Before dual-case devices became available the use of single-case ones was clearly defensible because inescapable.
The defense of the continued use of single-case ones once dual-case replcements had become available, notionally on economic grounds, was in fact an instance of the all but reflexive responses of bureaucratized EDP managements to new technology. They opposed providing every programmer with his or her own terminal: terminals were not needed all the time; they could be shared, as keypunches had been. They opposed the use of color terminals, describing them as costly frills. They opposed the use of non-impact printers, IBM or Xerox. They oppose the modernization of ancient, creaky applications: If it ain't broke, don't fix it. I could extend this litany ad infinitum et nauseam; but my point is, I hope, made. The mainframe and its software are superb vehicles, but most of their facilities go unused, at least directly, in most shops. (It is true that they get some indirect use becauxe ISVs use them under the covers.) The deeply conservative, reactionary in the literal sense, managers of most mainframe shops oppose the use of new technology because they perceive it to be disruptive; and of course it is, but those who reject it are first left behind and then, all but certainly, displaced. I am not at all sanguine about the long-term survival of the mainframe outside a few niches. It should do, but most of the managers of mainframe shops are preoccupied with preserving the comfortable, familiar past. They are, predictably I suppose, curators and not innovators. Worse, the young, who smell this, confound organizational malaise with technical obsolescence. John Gilmore, Ashland, MA 01721 - USA ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
