The 50-year journey into the Clouds

Grazed from Gadget.  Author: Editorial Staff.

Technology has come a long way since IBM announced the System/360 mainframe in 1964. But how did the connectivity we take for granted now come about? MARK WALKER attempts to answer this and gives his opinion on where to next.  It’s April 7, 1964, and while the Beatles are telling the world that ‘Money Can’t Buy Me Love’, IBM is attempting to convince the business community that it can at least buy you a decent mainframe.

The IBM System/360 – touted as the Big Blue’s most innovative iteration to date – had just been announced, and since then the technology industry has changed in extraordinary ways, shaping the way we live, work, and play. The impact on Africa has been profound, with the continent and its people now connected with each other and the rest of the world in ways that couldn’t possibly have been imagined only a decade or so ago. But how did the connectivity we now all take for granted first come about?…


For 17 years after the System/360 launch, the world of technology was living its 1st Platform. In this world, mainframes reigned supreme, and just a few million enterprise users on the planet had access to them via terminals. Throughout this era and way into the subsequent one, all computer-related activity was restricted to the interaction between a person and a computer. However, such interaction was never of a personal nature…

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