The news this weekend is that InfoWorld will not be printed anymore. I was editor twice, in 1983-84 and again 1991-96, so this seems like it would be sad. But it’s actually anti-climatic and precisely for the reason that makes being a VC now so much fun: computers don’t matter anymore.

InfoWorld was fun because computers did matter. Personal computers mattered in the eighties; every week new models and features came out and it was exciting to participate in the reporting of those events. Networked computers mattered in the nineties and it was fun to be a key evaluator of new products for enterprises. Now that stuff is just a commodity: Personally, I’ve stopped caring about which processor Intel is making and am way beyond caring about new versions of Windows or new client applications. Instead, the action has moved entirely to network based services delivered over the internet.

I shudder to think that I even thought it was important to forecast in 1991 that the last mainframe would be unplugged in 1996. Sure, I was wrong and mainframes kept plugging away and, indeed, are continuing to plug away as we speak. But does anybody care, except the people who sell them and buy them and have to keep them running?