The Merging PC and Internet Worlds

Dualism in Information Technology

The fundamental dualism of the twentieth century was discovered to be that of matter/energy. Either of these being transformable into the other.

The concept of dualism does not stop there though, whether it be matter/energy, space/time, particle/wave or probabilistic/deterministic it appears the world is filled with dualistic entities. When these entities are viewed from different perspectives they can appear to have very different characteristics which may be subjective or objective as the case may be.

In the case of Information technology the situation is very similar. The basic ingredients of IT; hardware and software are also subject to dualism in that "Any software process can be transformed into an equivalent hardware process, and any hardware process can be transformed into an equivalent software process" (Microprocessor Design - Edwin E. Klingman - 1977).

Until very recently however there was a very rigid IT duopoly. One company did the fundamental hardware stuff and another did the IT software. It was hardly the ideal situation to benefit from the so-called hardware/software dualism. Each of these companies defended its right to maximize its revenues and often did this at the expense of the other. The Vista era summed this up well. The software company having to make multiple versions of the software to compensate for the lack of suitable "64-bit ready" hardware.

Perhaps 2010 heralds a new era where "the duopoly" becomes "open" to change. Even one where "open architecture" and "open source" finally become adopted as respective watch words by these firms.

If you've taken the time to read this far, you may be asking yourself " what's the point in all this?

Well, the latest open source software still allows hardware built as early as the year 2000 to run most of the latest applications. But it also embraces legacy software dating back thirty years along with the latest client software opening the door to the new Cloud Computing paradigm.

We have this feeling we're only at the beginning of a new era for the PC.