Science & Tech Quote by Ken Olsen

It lands like a dare because history made it ridiculous. Ken Olsen, a titan of minicomputers at DEC, wasn’t auditioning for the role of anti-tech crank; he was defending a worldview in which computing is infrastructural, institutional, and therefore controllable. The line’s punch comes from its absolute phrasing, the managerial confidence of someone used to deciding what “counts” as a legitimate use case.

The intent is narrower than the meme suggests. In the late 1970s, “computer” still meant expensive, centralized machinery tethered to corporations, universities, and labs. Home gadgets that computed existed, but the idea of a general-purpose personal computer as a mass consumer object was culturally unsettled and commercially unproven. Olsen’s public posture reflected DEC’s business reality: selling robust systems to organizations, not to hobbyists. Calling home computing irrational wasn’t just prediction; it was market boundary enforcement.

The subtext is about power. Put computers in homes and you shift who gets to process information, write software, store data, and build networks. You replace IT gatekeepers with end users, and procurement committees with teenagers and tinkerers. Olsen’s line performs a kind of paternalism common to industrial-era tech leadership: the belief that complexity should stay behind institutional walls, where it can be administered safely and monetized predictably.

That’s why it still circulates. It’s not merely “wrong”; it’s a snapshot of how incumbents talk when a technology is about to slip its leash, moving from mainframe cathedral to household appliance and, eventually, to personal identity.