I absolutely love the original analysis (which is why I shared it).
The hardware version: anything capable of general purpose work is too important to use- so you delegate to specialized hardware. That hardware then evolves the capability to do general work and therefore becomes itself too valuable to use.
The software version: Domain Specific Languages, Remote Procedure Call, and many others.
It's interesting how something like the opposite ended up happening. Microprocessors became so cheap that they're used in almost everything. In theory, your keyboard and monitor can do general work, if you update their firmware to tell them what to do. Even my (electric) toothbrush contains a microprocessor.
The conclusion is amusing in retrospect (obviously things have changed since then!):
"The view suggested by Daniel Bobrow that the display
processor need not, indeed should not, contain mere general
purpose computing power, largely determined the design
of our display processor."
The hardware version: anything capable of general purpose work is too important to use- so you delegate to specialized hardware. That hardware then evolves the capability to do general work and therefore becomes itself too valuable to use.
The software version: Domain Specific Languages, Remote Procedure Call, and many others.
Current graphics ideas: shaders, CUDA, and so on.