Nov 16, 2012
-Dave Edstrom
Note: This was written for the November 14th, 2012 IMTS Insider
The phrase, “The Network Is The Computer”, was Sun Microsystems
company tag line. Today, that phrase is obvious to anyone who has ever
sat in front of a web browser; however, in 1984 that was the most
prophetic statement anyone could have made to predict the future of
computing. I worked at Sun from early 1987 through 2010 and this
slogan proved to be the blueprint not only for Sun’s vision of
computing, but the vision of computing for companies around the globe.
It’s important to understand how and why this slogan came to be a
landmark for an entire industry.
The history of this phrase goes back to a 1984 train ride in China that
John Gage, Sun employee #21, creator of JavaOne, NetDay and Chief Researcher and Director of the Science Office and
Bill Joy,
Sun co-founder, Chief Scientist and known as the “Edison of the
Internet”. How do I know this? I was fortunate enough to have a
number of dinners with John and Bill. I remember asking Bill at a
Sushi restaurant in Aspen, CO when I was there with two other Technical
Directors and a Distinguished Engineer, how the phrase came about.
Bill told the story that he and John were traveling on the train in
China and they were going through John’s slides. John made the
observation that importance of the network was growing at an exponential
rate and he wanted to reflect that in the title of his upcoming talk.
Initially, John said that “the network is the disk drive”, to which
Bill, replied that the phrase did not capture his talk. John then came
up with, “the network is the computer”, and that was used for the talk
and became Sun’s famous tag line.
A few years later I was having dinner with John and a CTO from a
local technology company in DC when I decided to ask John about the
history of Sun’s tag line. John repeated what Bill said almost word for
word.
It is very important to put that time period in perspective for those
who were not in the industry back then. In 1984 computer networking
was just starting to take shape with various non-compatible networks
that completely lack of the characteristics that we take for granted
today. In the 1980s and the early 1990s there were different
topologies from ring, star, bus and net to the plethora of networks and
protocols from AppleTalk, Banyan VINES, FDDI, SMB, MS-NET, Ethernet,
Token Ring, DECnet, SNA, ARCnet, 802.3, SDLC, XNS, X.25, TCP/IP, ISDN,
and ATM to name just a few. Networking computers together was
complicated and expensive. A popular network was called SneakerNet.
For those of you not old enough, SneakerNet was when you grabbed a
floppy, wrote the file(s) needed to be transferred on it, and then
carried it (SneakerNet) to the person’s PC that needed the file. The
role of network engineer came out of this time period. There was no
plug-n-play as we have today. There was no cloud computing. There were
no smart phones. There were no iPads or tablets. AOL was considered a
powerhouse in the early 1990s because they had literally banks of
modems that you would dial into and hear the high pitch hand shake
between your computer’s modem and AOL’s on the other end. 1984 was a
very long time ago in the computer industry and for John Gage to have
made that incredible insightful comment is absolutely amazing.
Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC), came out with a t-shirt that
said, “The Network is the Network, The Computer is the Computer, Sorry
For Any Confusion.” At Sun, we got a kick out of that t-shirt, but DEC
really did miss the point.
Today, the phrase is ingrained in everything that we do online. When
you use an app on your iPhone or Android, do you know or even care
where the data is stored? Not unless you are a geek you don’t. You
simply want access to your data in a fast and reliable fashion.
On January 10th, 2006, I happened to be out at Sun's Headquarters in
Menlo Park, CA when I heard about the Sun Founders Panel to be held the
evening the next day at
The Computer History Museum.
Like any long time Sun employee or geek in general, I wanted to be
there live. When I went there in the afternoon of the 11th, I was told
there were no more tickets left. I asked the nice folks at The Computer
History Museum what could I do in order to get in. They said that there
would be a waiting list that they would start at 6:00pm taking names.
I asked if I purchased a very nice Computer Museum polo shirt would I be #1 on the list. They smiled said,
"I think we can do that." Luckily for me, I was one of the few on the waiting list who did get in that night.
It was a
fantastic night that was hosted by John Gage with all four of Sun's founders there -
Andy Bechtolsheim,
Vinod Khosla,
Scott McNealy and
Bill Joy. I learned about Vaughn Pratt and the huge contributions that he made to Sun Microsystems. Vaughn designed the famous
Sun logo, which features four interleaved copies of the word "sun"; it is an
ambigram according to Wikipedia.
At the end of the evening, there was time for question and answer. I
thought this was a great time to permanently capture the story of "The
Network is the Computer". One of the reasons that I did this is I
remember sitting in a meeting at Sun a few years back with some
customers I knew very well when a marketing VP was trying to take credit
for coming up with the phrase. Not being the shy introvert and not
wanting to see customers get wrong information, I spoke up and said,
“John Gage came up with the phrase with Bill Joy on a train trip in
China in 1984. I know this because I personally asked both of them.”
The marketing VP then backed down from his outlandish claim. I then
went to the microphone and asked Bill and John to retell the story,
which they did.
As you can probably tell by now, I am a bit of history buff when it
comes to the computer industry. I believe how we got to a given point
matters. I also believe that the computer industry is one of the best
examples of where a rising tide really does lift all ships. When John
made his famous statement it was not just a title for his talk in China,
nor was simply the future tag line of Sun Microsystems, but it was
really a call to action for an entire industry. By laying out the
destination, John inspired thousands of engineers from around the globe
to help build that vision.
In 2006, I was giving a keynote at AMT’s annual meeting in Lake Las
Vegas, Nevada. This was the first of two keynotes that was the
beginning of MTConnect. Dr. David Patterson of University of
California Berkeley gave the second keynote laying out
MTConnect.
In my presentation borrowed Sun’s slogan and modified for a point I
was making regarding the future of manufacturing. My slide title was,
“The Network Is The Machine Tool.” I strongly believed that then and
time has only reinforced my belief. Cloud computing and cloud storage
is dramatically changing manufacturing. Look for a future IMTS Insider
article from me titled, “The Network Is The Machine Tool”, where I will
show why John Gage was right in 1984 and will be continued to be right
today and specifically as it applies to manufacturing.
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