No thanks for the memory

A computer's "memory" may not be exactly like yours and ours. For one thing a price can be put on it, and we know we have arrived in some kind of new age when memories can be bought and sold and made the subject of international complaint. Imagine IBM, the big computer manufacturer, having to face a European Common Market objection against the company's inclusion of some computer memory in its pricing of processing systems. "Some IBM competitors," according to the Wall Street Journal, "would prefer that IBM excluded memory when it sold processors, so that others could try to supply that function."

That's the thing about our own old-fashioned, you might say steam-powered, memories.

Isn't it nice that no one else can supply that function for us? Only we have the patent. The machine can't edge us out! So thanks for the memory. . . .