[ih] Fiction->History

[Larry Sheldon]

On 9/24/2015 13:26, John Day wrote:
> C’mon, Craig, ;-) predictions over 20 years is hardly any time at
> all. ;-)  I was thinking of all of those predictions by experts of 50
> to 100 years.  They seldom even get the broad brush right.
>
> Actually, at a recent conference I got asked the “old man question.”
> ;-)  “Gee, what do you think about having all of these iPhones and
> iPads and stuff?”  ;-)  After stifling a chuckle, I patiently
> explained that in 1974, there was a book called Computer Lib/Dream
> Machines  by Ted Nelson and Stewart Brand that laid out the Dynabook
> and much else. We have just been waiting for the hardware to catch
> up.  ;-)  (And BTW, I still have my copy).

I ran across my copy of "The Media Lab" by Brand (1987) and got to 
thinking about how much of the stuff never made into production while 
the underlying concepts have become school-child common ever-day stuff.

But is the focus _the_network_?

(I still think the telephone that learns how you REALLY think about 
callers and evaluates the facts of your feelings regarding a caller as 
contrasted with those regarding someone in your office and takes a 
message or forwards the call in accordance with how you really feel 
about the two.)
>
> Predicting over the last 40 years in our field has been relatively
> easy. The hard part has been predicting the dumb things that have
> happened!  ;-)

My (unrewarded) claim to fame is the prediction at people would come to 
think in terms of omniscient (don't think I used that term) wallpaper.

The idea was that about now people would no longer be interested (as a 
day-to-day matter) in the nature of connections--they would depend on 
the wallpaper to do the right thing.

Connect to it here, get cold water to drink, connect to it there and 
dispose of the waste.  Connect to it, get power for your light, connect 
to it and talk to the world (I did not see the ubiquity of radio).




-- 
sed quis custodiet ipsos custodes? (Juvenal)