Korva is a scroll of the internet’s best ideas.
Software that obsoleted a division
The Japan Demo
The newcomers arrived dressed in factory overalls. The host apologized and asked the engineers to start the demo again from the beginning, and they did.
The moment came when the engineers explained that the device had no modem, because everything it did was handled entirely in software. A moan went through the audience. A manager named Mr. Kato slumped forward and struck his head against the desk, and the host apologized again and told the engineers they had just obsoleted Kato-san's division.
Other Industries at Risk
Mitsubishi was not the only business in the path of the prototype. General Magic's operating system included a digital voicemail feature, which went after the answering machine. It also had games to play in the back of a cab or while waiting for an appointment, a virtual library stocked with e-books, and a touch screen that displayed a keyboard in software, with no keyboard or mouse required.
How can software replace a modem?
A modem converts digital data into audio tones for the phone line and converts them back at the other end. Traditional modems did that work with dedicated chips. A soft modem moves the signal processing onto the main processor and leaves only a simple interface to the line. By the late 1990s many consumer PCs shipped with this kind of modem, which lowered the cost of the part.
Why did voicemail threaten answering machines?
Answering machines recorded messages on magnetic tape cassettes, which had moving parts that wore out and held a limited number of messages. Digital voicemail stores messages as data in memory, so it needs no tape or motor. Phone companies began offering network voicemail to subscribers in the following years, which meant no machine was needed at home.
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