I bought my first electric typewriter when I entered graduate school. At the time, over 20 years ago, it was expensive-about $250. But it was also "state-of-the-art" technology for portable typewriters, with a carbon ribbon cartridge that gave my papers that oh-so-sharp look, as if the document had been produced on one of the expensive IBM Selectrics that were ubiquitous in university offices at the time. Shopping carefully, I confidently believed I had purchased the typewriter that would carry me though graduate school and well beyond.
My new typewriter performed exceptionally well for my master' s thesis and through the first years of my doctoral courses. But then, somewhere between the time the dissertation committee approved my proposal and the completion of the statistical analyses, I experienced word processing. Initially, it was word processing on an IBM mainframe computer that was cumbersome and arcane, but still a quantum leap forward over my typewriter. Not long afterward, it was word processing on microcomputers.
My relationship with my "state-of-the-art" typewriter-indeed with any typewriter-would never be the same. Like a growing number of academics and professionals in the early and mid 1980s my writing and other work quickly became dependent on a desktop computer. The tool I had hoped would last for a decade was relegated to the closet, to emerge only on occasion for completing special forms.
The research institute where I worked during graduate school bought its first microcomputer, an Apple III, in 1981. I bought my first Macintosh in 1984. The Apple III, with printer, cost about $6,000; my first Mac, also with a printer but sold at campus discount, cost me about $ 1,800. My old typewriter still works, whereas the Apple III and my first Mac are long gone, replaced several times over by newer technologies that do far more and cost much less.
Adjusted for inflation, the $250 I spent for a typewriter in 1975 would today convert to about $ 1,000-enough to purchase a low-end (but still very useful) Windows or Macintosh system. In nominal dollars, the cost of a reasonable multimedia computer system now runs about $2,000. But the money buys far more computer than it did a decade ago, let alone just two or three years ago-more memory, more hard-drive capacity, faster, more powerful processor chips, a fax/modem, plus a CD and bundled software.
The useful life of a $2,000 computer system bought today will be about 2430 months; the useful life (in terms of market standards) of the software that comes bundled with that new computer is about 9-12 months. Technological obsolescence is a structural component of technology-driven change.
All this documents Moore's Law, a fundamental axiom of the computer industry: product performance nearly doubles almost every 24 months, while price falls roughly by half. Computer manufacturers rush new products and technologies to market with a speed rivaled only by clothing companies that show new styles with the change of seasons. Trade magazines routinely criticize hot products launched just nine months earlier as "old and tired." Soft ware companies release "new, improved, greatly enhanced, and far-superior" versions of their products every 9-15 months.
Of course consumers have come to accept what we might call the "half-life/half-price" structure of the computer market. Buy it today as a hot new product and you pay a lot; buy it in six or nine months and it will cost much less.
In some ways buying a computer has become like buying a new book: pay top dollar for the hardcover and have it now or wait for the less-expensive softcover version. Thus, time is money-in both publishing and computing.
But buying a computer is also like buying a car: sticker price is not always the "out-the-door" price. Because buying a computer (at $2,000-$3,000) and a car (now averaging almost $20,000) involves real money, many consumers generally try to plan these purchases carefully. Some of us save some money in a cookie jar or special bank account. Then again, some of us also succumb to passion and rush out for that "gotta have" new computer (a multimedia system with a hot new chip and CD player) or new car (Volvo? Mustang? minivan?) with a powerful (or thrifty) new engine and CD stereo.
In short, as individuals most of us generally pay attention to and anticipate costs. But what we recognize as consumers we have yet to institutionalize in the behavior of academic departments and institutions. Much of the computer purchasing done by colleges and universities is opportunistic: campuses tend to find money rather than reserve funds. Many institutions often resolve their computer purchasing problems on an ad hoc basis, frequently using yearend money.
