A string of ones and zeroes was not a difficult thing for Bill Gates to distribute, once he'd thought of the idea. The hard part was selling it-reassuring customers that they were actually getting something in return for their money. Anyone who has ever bought a piece of software in a store has had the curiously deflating experience of taking the bright shrink-wrapped box home, tearing it open, finding that it's ninety-five percent air, throwing away all the little cards, party favors, and bits of trash, and loading the disk into the computer. The end result {after you've lost the disk} is nothing except some images on a computer screen, and some capabilities that weren't there before. Sometimes you don't even have that-you have a string of error messages instead. But your money is definitely gone. Now we are almost accustomed to this, but twenty years ago it was a very dicey business proposition.
( Neal Stephenson )
[ In the Beginning...Was the ]
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