Yes, Corprate industry did manufacture computers, but this is only possible in a capitalism; I should have worded myself more carefully to pacify you socialists. As for rent in Santa Cruz, its just whatever the market can bear. Something must be driving people to live in Silicon Valley in spite of the "corprate messes" you mention, or maybe its just those evil land lords.At any rate, I will be the first to acknoledge there has never been a working socialism, maybe because one can't exist, but I will put skepticsism aside for now. As know the device sitting in front of you required a lot of capital and reasources to make. In a utopian socialism where means of production are owned by "the people" and wealth is somehow distrubuted without currency or government, why would anyone attempt to make such things as computers? Development would go on for years before anything practical would be made.
Researchers would not have the same pressure to make new products and would likelly not explore alternative uses for what they created. If anything remotely like a computer was developed it would be standardized, and weak, doing only things like accounting and weather prediction (then again ther would be no need to count money ergo no need for computers). PC's are frivolious, and a mesure of wealth, surely the democracy would not allow individuals to own computers unless they ALL could, something even more impractical then computers themselves.
Who spearheaded computers? Competing corparations and people who had an incentive to make them faster, practical, and powerful. Only Capitalism could have provided this.
