But, as in the boom-bust computer chip industry, demand is triggering huge increases in supply, depressing prices.
No shiny spaceships and helpful robots, just noirish paranoia, busted up computer hardware, hard-drinking renegades and drugs.
That didn't, uh, always work out; I busted my computer (and my friends' computers) more than a handful of times trying to do weird shit.
A friend of mine was working on his -- O.K., he sort of left it until the last minute -- when his computer busted.
To celebrate the Darwin bicentennial, the National Academy of Sciences recreated the bust in a computer-generated copy for display at their Washington, DC headquarters.
But America's investment boom has now turned to bust: new orders for computers and electronic products fell by a third in the year to May.
Go in, say "My computer is busted".
Busted photocopiers, ditched computers, old monitors, miles of electrical wiring, turntables and the detritus of the modern age filled the space.
When not being used to bust cheating college students, a computer program that detects plagiarism may have helped show that Shakespeare, below, was an author of an unattributed play about Edward III, The Times of London reported.
Ever since the dot-com boom went bust, private-company support for computer science research has dried up, leaving NSF to support the great majority of non-defense CS research.
Remember how fast he shut down his computer after you busted him?
