On 22 September 2026, Computer Weekly turns 60. To mark the milestone, we asked some of our friends – experts, parliamentarians, IT leaders and suppliers – for their perspectives on how tech has changed their lives over six decades. What’s changed the most for you since then?
If a week is a long time in politics, then 60 years is an eternity in the technology industry.
I’d first like to commend the role Computer Weekly has played in chronicling the birth, growth, and demise of tech trends and companies over that period. When I founded Pega in 1983, Computer Weekly was already well established, reporting on the first versions of our software that ran on VAX systems and IBM CICS.
Today, the world of technology we operate in is almost unrecognisable from that era, so to demonstrate this kind of longevity, forged from a strong and lasting passion for the industry, is truly something worth celebrating.
People often assume that a career in technology starts with a single defining moment that ignites that spark of passion within you. But in my case, there were several. In the early 1970s, while I was still in high school, I fell in love with a calculator I was amazed by.
It was called the Bowmar Brain, and cost over $200 at the time. I saved up my money and was about to buy one when I saw that new models were coming out that were cheaper and more powerful.
A few years later what I would have bought would have been so obsolete, it would have been a joke. This taught me that you always have to be able to re-evaluate and reconsider where technology is taking you. And I quickly realised that if you can’t change at an accelerated rate, you’re going to get competitively beaten.
The bigger picture
From an early age, I was shaped by curiosity, frustration, and a persistent desire to understand how things work. Systems always interested me, and I enjoyed learning why something behaved the way it did, not just how to use it.
That instinct manifested itself in several ways, but perhaps most noticeably through strategy games like chess, where I could learn to step back, look at the bigger picture, and think through the options and consequences before acting.
I was able to apply some of the principles of strategy I learned through chess when I first began working with computers and even built early AI systems to teach machines how to play the game.
What struck me in those days was not the speed or the power of the technology, but the possibility of capturing judgement in a repeatable way. I quickly found that while it was possible to tell a machine what to do, the more interesting challenge was to teach it why. The question that fascinated me was: how could you reflect intent, trade-offs, and experience, all in one system that behaves consistently and transparently? It became a personal throughline for me throughout my career – even before much of this thinking morphed into what we know today as AI.
As the years progressed, I watched the world of technology change dramatically in businesses. Computing changed from something rare and centralised into an essential tool, woven into everything we do. Throughout that change, what mattered most was never raw horsepower. The real breakthroughs came from making complexity manageable and from shaping outcomes through simplification.
Deeply frustrated
One of my first jobs after school was working for a systems integrator, putting technology stacks in for large banks. I was left deeply frustrated by the fact that these systems seemed only to enable people to work in service of the machines, not vice versa.
Worse still, in many cases the very systems organisations were in thrall to were those that made the process of making effective decisions slow, expensive, risky – or, sometimes, all three. This left me shocked. I had always held the belief that technology was there to enable progress, not to lock organisations in the past.
“I had an idea based on bringing business and IT people together and having them work together to use the power of technology to achieve transformational outcomes for their customers and for each other. When I presented this idea to my boss, it was rejected”
Alan Trefler
That experience influenced me profoundly, and I realised I didn’t want to build technology for its own sake. I wanted to build systems that could evolve, changing in step with the world around them. I had an idea based on bringing business and IT people together and having them work together to use the power of technology to achieve transformational outcomes for their customers and for each other. When I presented this idea to my boss, it was rejected. That led to me applying these principles to build Pega into what it is today.
Empowering business
As we look ahead to the next 60 years, the question of how technology can empower businesses to embrace this evolution and adapt to change is key. I believe that workflows, as the connective tissue of any organisation, are at the heart of this challenge. The transformational ability to reimagine them on a regular basis, organising, creating, evolving, and then running them at scale will matter more, not less, for this reason.
I expect it to fundamentally pave the way for businesses to futureproof themselves and benefit from new technological shifts as the world around them changes.
New generations of AI will clearly play a key role in this change, reshaping productivity, decision-making, and customer experience in profoundly positive ways. But I’m also certain it will not come without risk. History suggests that periods of innovation such as the one we’re currently experiencing are always accompanied by waves of hype and confusion. It can be easy to be beguiled by something new that promises to bring about such a fundamental transformational impact.
For me, organisations that succeed will be those that anchor themselves in what truly matters – their customers, their people, and the outcomes they exist to deliver. Technology that supports these goals is worth embracing. Everything else is just noise and distraction.
IT isn’t magic
To return to some earlier themes, sometimes it pays to take a step back and look at the bigger picture. Despite what some will tell you, no technology – including today’s incredibly powerful AI – is magic. The magic comes, as I learned in my chess-playing early days, by taking the time to make smart decisions, using the technology where and when it can add the greatest value.
I see interesting parallels with the fibre-optic cable revolution in the early days of the internet, when the infrastructure was massively overbuilt. While the technology itself was greeted enthusiastically, the market crashed when reality eventually caught up with that over-exuberance.
The same pattern is emerging again, only at a greater scale. I strongly believe businesses need to develop a more critical mindset and resist the temptation to chase every new capability simply because it exists. At the risk of repeating myself – technology should enable progress. It should not lock organisations into the mistakes of their past.
A sustainable future
I’d also like to address the elephant in the room that many technology leaders don’t want to recognise but can’t afford to ignore – sustainability.
Today’s AI models can deliver astonishing outcomes, but they are also energy-hungry and capital-intensive, indirectly fuelling problematic trends like “tokenmaxxing” along the way. In my opinion, we will almost certainly need huge breakthroughs in fusion technology, which aims to replicate the sun’s energy production to create a clean, safe, nearly limitless source of power. This may be the only way to sustainably support the datacentres that underpin AI if we continue down our present path.
I don’t think anyone can predict with certainty what the next 60 years will bring. What Computer Weekly’s reporting over the years tells me is that anything can happen in that sort of timeframe. But I’m more confident than ever that technology is a force for good, and that by looking for the best ways to adapt to an ever-changing world, using our best judgement to allow us to do that, we can ensure that is the case.
I look forward to seeing Computer Weekly continue to document that change, along with the continuing ups and downs of the wider technology industry, in the years to come.
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