This brings back happy memories. I was lucky enough to have the precursor, an Acorn Pocket Book, as part of my school curriculum. I lost it a few years ago in a move but I can still remember the the distinctive "device" smell (probably the case material). I yearned for the additional memory of the Psion 2. I would write lengthy stories that would fill up the memory. No off-device storage. I'd have to delete entries of birds i'd spotted and researched from cards app, tough decisions needed to be made.
Long before pokemon swept the west, our teacher would take us bird watching. We'd create entries in the cards app for each one we spotted, then research the birds in the library to fill out the entry. Then, as a class we'd trade (share) our research with each other.
The Acorn was a rebadged Psion 3 rather than a precursor. I remember as I lusted after the Psions on display in Boots as a (dorky) child, and was ecstatic when our school piloted the Acorns.
(Psion and Acorn, two more examples of how the UK is capable of developing world-leading tech but not at successfully marketing it...)
Wow! I stand corrected. I was led to believe that Acorn went bust and sold to Psion. I thought it went Acorn Pocket Book 1, Acorn Pocket Book II, Psion 3.
Psion did the software bundled with the Sinclair 16K/48K ZX Spectrum that was bundled at launch. It also wrote the bundled apps for the Sinclair QL.
Then it did its own line of pocket computers: the Organizer, the unsuccessful MC solid-state laptops, which it then miniaturised into the very successful Series 3, 3A, 3C and 3MX.
Acorn licensed these and sold them with changed software in the ROM, with an schools/educational focus instead of PDA functions.
Psion followed on with the Psion 5, using Acorn's ARM processors and a whole new OS, EPOC32.
That evolved into Symbian and powered the 1st mass-market smartphones. It's now FOSS.
Acorn made it big because it designed the first mass-market RISC chip, the ARM.
Acorn spin-off Arm is alive and well and the Arm chips are the most widely-used CPUs in the world, with about 10x-100x as many sold every year as all x86 put together.
I've recently gotten into birding as an adult, and have heard that in some parts of the world basic bird identification is part of the curriculum (e.g. the Netherlands). If you don't mind me asking, what country/region did you go to school in? Was this the initiative of one teacher, or something more standardized?
The UK. Not standardized, just a lucky combination of a fancy school trying to justify fees and good teachers who made the most of the situation for their students.
That was a rebadged 3A, so with from 256kB to 1MB RAM as stock.
Psion did a 2MB model, but Acorn didn't.
As an owner of a 3 and 3A, the 3A was the usable version. The 3's screen was too small, and its storage meagre (but expandable, and I did.)
The 3A was 2x the speed, a much bigger screen with better contrast (but no backlight) and versions with up to 2MB were available, which for this class of machine was a vast amount of storage you'd never fill. Thing 2TB for comparison now, plus 2 drive bays for more if you need it. A laptop with 6TB? That is plenty for almost anyone.
I'm the same. Half the time I feel inspired and excited, the other half I feel cynical and tired.
FWIW from my point-of-view as someone in one of those companies working on products (and who hasn't read the paywalled article) I see a few things playing out that are not new, mostly it's the same newer, bigger hammer syndrome:
1. Trying to solve the same old inconsequential problems but with new tech
This happens all the time. Eventually you realise that the problem is actually relatively benign. You want the hammer to hit home every time but realise that even if it did there is no real value gained.
2. Trying to solve a problem that's already been solved with existing more established tech
Open calls for ideas in company innovation labs or platforms are full of noise. Some of that noise is always around the same automation problems, usually some kind of extraction or some kind of categorisation in a workflow. Most of the time products exist but people are just unaware. In large companies the capability might already exist in house but there's a "must invent here" bias
3. Trying to solve hard problems without the right domain or technical expertise
There are legitimate problems that appear innovative and novel, maybe ones that have been waiting for this level of capability to come along so they can execute, however, adequate knowledge of the technical domain (fine-tuning, prompt engineering, zero-shot, context) or the problem domain (how to read a cat-scan) limits their ability to make a cobbled together PoC reliable, repeatable, scalable, trusted.
Think of it as some generalist buying a stock rally car to build a new racing team, but doing it all themselves instead of hiring a mechanic to tune it properly, or a driver to give you the mechanic feedback... or the mechanic to tell the driver what they can and can't do at the extremes... or the driver to tell the mechanic to FO and "fix" it. Dialogue.
4. Problem is too niche and hard to communicate effectively
If a project succeeds in an organisation and there's no one around to hear it, did it really succeed?
5. Lack of existing innovation culture, strategy, or clear direction hamstrings any serious attempt
A non-starter. A lot of organisations still can't embed or operationalise their good ideas properly. If they can't do that already, it's unlikely to change here.
6. LLM successfully implemented into existing product but no body notices or cares.
The whole "put a clock in it" from product design or "get it to send email" of software.
7. Hard problems even with the right attitude and team still take time solve effectively with relatively new technology
Ignoring the legitimate institutional roadblocks of assuring privacy, security, safety, ethics etc. It's still early days. Cost of O&M long-term is still kind of uncertain, as are some of the basic parameters like the context window. Increasing the size of it could fundamentally change your approach. Anyone who was building a system before plugins were announced probably needed to re-think a number of things and go back to the drawing board. Sure there are some who will just continue as planned and iterate later, but some will be cautious before locking in.
Lastly, I know personally for me, LLMs have become a large part of enhancing my daily workflow. They have increased both the quantity and quality of my output but the 2 fundamental problems for me are:
1. Remember it's there and to use it. (Can what I'm doing could be done with LLM assistance)
or
2. How to formulate a question or request. (This is a fundamental problem of all "work" and "management" how do you define and communicate effectively?)
Purposeful strategic misrepresentation from those in power leaving others to succumb to sunk cost fallacy and perpetuate the myth of Hirschman's hiding hand...
Amusingly the interest rates episode from a couple weeks ago got into the relationship between deposits, customer interest rates, and rising rates on assets:
About 20 years ago I moved into a tiny studio with my first serious girlfriend. She didn't appreciate the beautiful sounds of my 1980's IBM Model M keyboard I'd been using since I was 5. Probably more so since I usually worked late into the night. Given another gripe was the significant amount of floor/deskspace used by my two 19" CRT monitors, I compromised, and replaced the Model M with some $20 logitech thing, throwing the M out in the trash.
