Yes, I was in IBM, some AI in their Research Division, from 1985 to 1993 when IBM had a big crash.
Maybe an old idea I had about PCs has some insight: The idea is that for several years into the rise of the PC, the base, solid as concrete, fundamental, economic productivity reason for the PC was to kill off the typewriters, that is, word processing; as one guy put it, "capture the key strokes". The typewriters didn't "capture the keystrokes" and, thus, were a huge economic waste. Next in line was spreadsheets.
Now the biggie? Okay, replace TVs. We've already essentially replaced newspapers printed on paper; and PDF is replacing a lot of books printed on paper.
The future? See a problem that in terms of economic productivity needs solving, and get one or a few PCs and solve it. How? There is nearly no limit on the new problems to be solved or the new means of solution.
Maybe an old idea I had about PCs has some insight: The idea is that for several years into the rise of the PC, the base, solid as concrete, fundamental, economic productivity reason for the PC was to kill off the typewriters, that is, word processing; as one guy put it, "capture the key strokes". The typewriters didn't "capture the keystrokes" and, thus, were a huge economic waste. Next in line was spreadsheets.
Now the biggie? Okay, replace TVs. We've already essentially replaced newspapers printed on paper; and PDF is replacing a lot of books printed on paper.
The future? See a problem that in terms of economic productivity needs solving, and get one or a few PCs and solve it. How? There is nearly no limit on the new problems to be solved or the new means of solution.