Pioneer computer journalist, ultimate cosmopolitan he was of Indian and French extraction and scourge of IBM Corp, Rex Malik died on Friday of a cerebral haemorrhage. Mr Malik’s 1975 book about IBM, And Tomorrow the World, remains one of the most stimulating and disturbing books ever written about an industrial giant, writes Hesh Wiener. When it was published, IBM was the darling of Wall Street, and the business community, universally feared and widely admired, judged harshly only by its competitors and advocates of the underdogs that tried to fight Big Blue for a piece of the market. Today, with IBM’s image tarnished, its flaws visible and its vulnerability a sad fact of life, Malik’s view might well be coincident not only with those of IBM’s outside critics, but also with those insiders seeking to save the company. Malik’s other contributions include the books What’s Wrong With British Industry and The Viewdata Revolution, influential participation in the television series Computers in Business and the Computer Programme, countless articles on information technology, and, most recently, editorship of InterMedia, a quarterly touching on every aspect of communications, to which he brought sharp wit and un-conventional wisdom: to his friends InterMedia was more than a good read. It was an endearing display of the playful Rex Malik, which revealed a facet of the man that remained largely hidden from those who knew him only through his more forceful and provocative creations.
