How many computers?

Part of the lore of computing discusses the mistakes people make in predictions. Thomas J. Watson (president of IBM) predicted the need for five computers -- worldwide. Ken Olson, founder and president of DEC, thought that no one would want a computer in their home.

I suspect that the we repeat these stories for the glee that they bring. What could be more fun than seeing important, well-known people make predictions that turn out to be wrong.

Microsoft's goal, in contrast to the above predictions, was a computer in every home and on every desk, and each of them running Microsoft software. A comforting goal for those who fought in the PC clone wars against the mainframe empire.

But I'm not sure that T. J. Watson was wrong.

Now, before you point out that millions (billions?) of PCs have been sold, and that millions (billions?) of smartphones have been sold, and that those smartphones are really computers, here me out.

Computers are not quite what we think they are. We tend to think of them as small, stand-alone, general-purpose devices. PCs, laptops, smartphones, tablets... they are all computers, right?

Computers today are computing devices, but the border is not so clear. Computers are useful when they are part of a network, and connected to the internet. A computer that is not connected to the internet is not so useful. (Try an experiment: Take any computer, smartphone, or tablet and disconnect it from the network. Now use it. How long before you become bored?)

Without e-mail, instant messages, and web pages, computers are not that interesting -- or useful.

The boxes we think of as computers are really only parts of a larger construct. That larger construct is built from processors and network cards and communication equipment and disks and server rooms and software and protocols. That larger "thing" is the computer.

In that light, we could say that the entire world is running on one "computer" which happens to have lots of processors and multiple operating systems and many keyboards and displays. Parts of this "computer" are powered at different times, and sometimes entire segments "go dark" and then return. Sometimes individual components fail and are discarded, like dead skin cells. (New components are added, too.)

So maybe Mr. Watson was right, in the long run. Maybe we have only one computer.