Baby Boomers Invented Computers

This week's Newsweek takes a dive off the deep end in another article in their series about Boomers. In this one, Boomers get credit for developing "the tech landscape" over the last 40 years. It's a little over the top for our tastes, and has awakened another round of Age Wars.

In our view Boomers have certainly contributed much to the computer and Internet age, but development of "the tech landscape" has more to do with a period in history than a generation. Steve Jobs and Bill Gates did extraordinary things, no doubt, but on the backs of the work of other men, like Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard (by most accounts, the true fathers of high tech).

Where the premise of the article really fell apart for us was the last paragraph:

None of this would have happened if the technology itself had not ripened, and it was for the first time possible to build personal computers and write software for them. But the other element was the generational nature of its innovators [emphasis added]. The magic was that those two factors came together, and as a result, the early lives of boomers will become as quaint to their grandchildren as the tales of the boomers' own forefathers were to them.

Come on, doesn't every generation have innovators? Edison, Einstein, Henry Ford, Thomas Watson?

The kicker in the article is "it can be argued that the best-known baby boomer of all is the computer itself."

Thank goodness other commentators realize this is just too much, and are saying so.

We'll be on the lookout for the Generation X reaction, which we anticipate will be brutal, if not accurate. We'll let you know what we find.