the data center

Decades ago, computing power was concentrated in mainframes tucked away behind the scenes because there was no alternative — only a hulking room-sized box that could contain any significant amount of computational power. The idea that this power could be distributed rather than centralized seemed like such folly that in 1943, IBM Chairman Thomas Watson said famously (or infamously) that “I think there’s a world market for maybe five computers.” | aaron weiss, computing in the clouds. netWorker, vol 11 Issue 4, December 2007

in the 1970s came the era of personal computer, but maybe one part of the cloudy thing at least is nothing more as to throw light on watson's perspective again.