Byte Magazine Volume 07 Number 08 – Logo (1982)

On page 14, you'll find Figure 3, suggesting that it is cheaper to employ robots than Humans from the US, West Germany, or Japan! $4.80 / hour gets you the finest robot labor apparently.

I got a copy of that issue at the antique mall for $1 a few weeks ago.

I remember this issue. I used to read Byte magazine cover-to-cover, multiple times per issue. I also built many of the circuits they published and learned a tremendous amount from both hardware and coding articles. It's hard for people today to imagine a monthly publication with over 500 pages, yet that's what Byte became. It was fantastic. I still have a box full of articles I clipped before discarding my collection (at some point you have to let go).

The other thing that's amazing to me --unrelated to Byte-- is how much of current AI/machine-learning is stuff that was being done as far back as thirty years ago. I have a four volume set on AI dating back to that era. Most of the neural network stuff we see as magical tools today exists in those books. The difference is that we now have machines with massive storage, working memory and speed. In some ways we haven't really gone very far at all, a perspective lost to those who don't have the benefit of history.

Of which more than half (of what I've skimmed through, at least) are ads. Makes FB at 1/4 ad content seem even reasonable.

The ads in a publication like Byte (or many of the other computer magazines of the day) were a different beast. Quite often, they were the only way to learn about new products and the products advertised were relevant to the audience of the magazine. It is a far cry from the mass market advertising found on Facebook (or television, or radio).