Philosophers tell us that counterfactuals are subjunctive conditionals in which the antecedent is known or supposed for purposes of argument to be false. Historians know that counterfactuals are probably inescapable if we are ever to learn from the past. But explicit counterfactual reasoning often generates more heat than light. Consider the following example: "If the United States had not dropped atomic bombs on Japan in August 1945, the Japanese would still have surrendered when they did." Now make this argument at a veterans' convention and see what happens.
Of course, we can debate until the cows come home the plausibility of this or that counterfactual. As it is now somewhat fashionable to elaborate counterfactuals, we thought to offer a few examples for you to contemplate and debate at your next faculty meeting or at your nearest cybercafe.
"If Microsoft had declined to license its OS, desktop computing would have remained a niche activity and mainframe logic would still dominate the information business. With the emergence of the NC (network computer) and the WWW, mainframes return from the dust to dominate thinking. Thus whether Microsoft had licensed or not licensed its OS, its days are numbered."
"If Steve Jobs had remained at Apple, John Sculley would be pedaling PDAs for Pepsi."
"If AOL had not shipped its software on floppies, there would still be a market for floppy vendors."
"If there were no Internet, then meeting last-minute deadlines would require more dependence on fax technology."
"If Bill Gates had graduated from Harvard, he would be working for IBM."
"If Ross Perot had acquired Microsoft, then Windows 95 would be referred to as 'that giant sucking sound.'"
"If administrators rewarded faculty for publishing on the WWW, university presses would be publishing today in electronic form and webmasters would be tenured."
"If DOS commands were written in Ebonics, they would make more sense."
"If Oracle made NCs in designer colors with bottle openers, they'd be the prettiest and most functional paperweights on your desk."
"If chat rooms required ID and photo authentication, a lot of 14-year-old boys would have to find something else to do."
"If faculty were required to use networked resources . . ." Forget it. This is an immutable impossibility as networking requires a full understanding of sharing.
"If faculty - not grad students - were department webmasters . . ." Wait a minute . . . nope. See above.
David Andrew is a multimedia developer with The Revere Group in Northbook, Illinois. [email protected]
Jerry Goldman is a political scientist at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois. [email protected]