[naasking]

> Personal computing almost died multiple times. Xerox PARC had it all in 1973 but management killed it. IBM thought the market was ~5 computers total. The Homebrew Computer Club was nearly shut down for copyright infringement. Any of these inflection points going differently changes history.

Yes, history would be different, but that doesn't mean ICs and PCs weren't inevitable. As technology improves the capital required to innovate drops. At some point hobbyists can start making ICs at home. I think something like this happened with 3D printing.

> The counterfactual test: if these were truly inevitable, we'd see simultaneous independent invention everywhere. Instead we see: singular inventors, path dependence, and technologies that almost weren't (or actually weren't: where's our supersonic passenger travel?).

I disagree. Inevitability means that something will manifest at some point on a long enough timeline, not that it will necessarily manifest nearly concurrently on that timeline. Concurrent invention happens a lot and is a strong argument for inevitability, but isn't strictly necessary for inevitability.

For example, death is inevitable, even if we solve aging; we know you won't involuntarily die of old age in such a world, but you will die of something else, even if it's the heat death of the universe.