The Hard Thing About Hard Facts
5 min readSep 12, 2020
In 1977, Ken Olsen, the founder and CEO of Digital Equipment Corporation, reportedly said, “There is no reason for any individual to have a computer in his home.” It was an amazingly foolish thing to say and, ever since, observers have pointed to Olsen’s comment to show how supposed experts can be wildly wrong.
The problem is that Olsen was misquoted. In fact, his company was actually in the business of…
