Historians/economists describe a GPT or general purpose technology as something that has a broad impact on the economy -- electricity is a canonical example. Clearly, the computer / microchip is a GPT and its effects are still unfolding. It is to be expected that the computer's effects will continue to unfold and surprise us for the next many decades.
Farhad Manjoo makes me wonder if the "general purpose device" is itself a GPT. In this Slate.com essay titled "The iPod is dead," Manjoo writes:
In time, these players, too, will morph into computers. That's the way computing goes—as Jobs says, general-purpose devices eventually supplant everything else. There was a time when people bought portable word processors because computers were too expensive and all they wanted was something to write with. But in time PCs got cheaper, more portable, and more useful, and it no longer made sense to buy a writing machine. More recently, folks bought little devices called PDAs, tools to keep your appointments and contacts in order on the road. That was short-lived: Now every cell phone is a PDA. It's also a camera and a jukebox. And then there's the case of the Kindle, a dedicated device for reading books. Uh, Jeff Bezos—you might want to watch your back.
If you don't know his bio:
Farhad Manjoo is Slate's technology columnist and the author of True Enough: Learning To Live in a Post-Fact Society. You can e-mail him at farhad.manjoo@slate.com and follow him on Twitter.
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