Is a PC No Longer PC?

In California this week, the All Things Digital D8 Conference has been in full swing, with the red chairs on stage seating everyone from FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski to Avatar director James Cameron with their takes on the present and future of technology and digital media.

On Tuesday, Steve Jobs went so far as to say that the era of the PC is over and that new mobile devices are taking over, much like small cars took over trucks. "PCs are going to be like trucks," Jobs said. "They are still going to be around." The difference, he continued, is that only "one out of x people will need them."

As The Wall Street Journal reports today, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer countered, saying yesterday that "I think people are going to be using PCs in greater and greater numbers for many years to come."

Of course, in an era where cell phones have more computing power than the most advanced computer from a decade ago, who's to say what a personal computer is and isn't? It may not be PC to call your cell phone a PC, but isn't that what it is - just a smaller personal computer?

Who knows - maybe ten years from now, the implanted microchips in our skulls will be considered "personal" computers, too.