modal verbs - "it be" instead of "it could/would be"

Need we add that it be usable in the woods?

This paper¹, albeit an old one, contains an example of this odd way of writing. Where I would expect "..that it would/could/may/should/... be", there is nothing! I feel there is some lost information in here.

• Is this an ordinary way to express oneself nowadays, or is it more archaic, or "upper class"?


• Is there only one meaning to "it be"?

_{A Personal Computer for Children of All Ages - Alan C. Kay, Proceedings of the ACM National Conference, Boston Aug. 1972}

Answer

The sentence in question is cast in the present subjunctive, which is now almost dead even in written English. It has mostly been replaced by simple indicative forms or, as you indicate, by constructions with would or should.

However, a use which is widespread in US English (and has in the last 50 years been enjoying a modest revival in British English, too) is the mandative subjunctive, employed in clauses which complement a verb expressing an order or requirement: "It is the order of this Court that you be hanged by the neck until you are dead".

In the passage you cite, the author has boxed himself in. He starts by employing would be, which is usual with hope; but in his second sentence he feels obliged by the term constraint to employ the subjunctive: constraint that it be. And having performed that shift, he apparently understands that his final sentence also expresses a constraint:

What then is a personal computer? One would hope that it would be both a medium for containing and. expressing arbitrary symbolic notions, and also a collection of useful tools for manipulating these structures, with ways to add new tools to the repertoire. Another rarely invoked constraint is that it be superior to books and printing in at least some ways without being markedly inferior in others. (The previous remark seems to disallow known commercial display devices from consideration.) "Personal" also means owned by its user (needs to cost no more than a TV) and portable (which to me means that the user can easily carry the device and other things at the same time). Need we add that it be usable in the woods?

It is, to my mind, a graceless use, and should not be emulated. But there's nothing actually wrong or ungrammatical about it.