Had the US government not forced IBM to get out of the centralized provision of computing by consent agreements and eventual divestiture, and had the US government not forbidden the Bell System to enter the centralized computing business by the FCCs Computer Inquiry 2, its likely that computing and networking would have evolved in a more rational way that did not include personal computing.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Service_Bureau_Corporation

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Computer_Inquiry

It takes time and wastes effort, but technology eventually bests politicians.