IBM's future system of the past(jfsowa.com)

http://www.jfsowa.com/computer/

4 comments

msla8 anni fa

Here's another web page on the subject which links to still more:

https://people.cs.clemson.edu/~mark/fs.html

That has an interesting quote:

> Note the coverage of FS and what they describe as its "toxic aftereffects" on the corporation in Chapter 3 of Charles Ferguson and Charles Morris, Computer Wars: The Post-IBM World, Times Books, 1993. An excerpt:

>> Most corrosive of all, the old IBM candor died with F/S. Top management, particularly Opel, reacted defensively as F/S headed toward a debacle. The IBM culture that Watson had built was a harsh one, but it encouraged dissent and open controversy. But because of the heavy investment of face by the top management, F/S took years to kill, although its wrongheadedness was obvious from the very outset. "For the first time, during F/S, outspoken criticism became politically dangerous," recalls a former top executive."

rst8 anni fa

Several interesting internal documents about FS have recently surfaced at Bitsavers. See http://bitsavers.org/pdf/ibm/futureSystem/

mark_l_watson8 anni fa

Interesting history! I liked the comments about Linux eventually wining, one guy, Linus, starting something far more impactful than the mountain of work IBM did on Future System.

A little off topic, but the author of this article John Sowa wrote one of my favorite technical books a couple of decades ago on the topic of Knowledge Representation. Really influenced how I thought about information.

de_watcher8 anni fa

> one guy, Linus, starting something far more impactful

I'd just like to interject for a moment...

brecalynch8 anni fa

IBM was awarded a patent for blockchain-powered scientific research data. With it, they aim to make sharing such data more secure and efficient for the scientific community. This is yet another patent among many for the tech giant and global leader in blockchain development.