3 ms·

This article is absolute nonsense, each ten years we live life markedly differently. What’s interesting, often unimaginably so. If you would say that in 2000nds

by vl 7y ago

This article is absolute nonsense, each ten years we live life markedly differently. What’s interesting, often unimaginably so. If you would say that in 2000nds that most of the content would be consumed and most of the computing would be done on the tiny screen and that many people wouldn’t even own tv, people would laugh.

dredmorbius 7y ago
Duncan Makenzie had a new minisec, and he was not quite sure how parts of it worked. The 'Sec was the standard size of all such units, determined by what can fit comfortably in the human hand. At a quick glance, it did not differ greatly from one of the small electronic calculators that had started coming into general use at the end of the twentieth century. It was, however, infinitely more versatile, and Duncan could not imagine what life would be like without it. Because of the finite size of clumsy human fingers, it had no more controls than that of its ancestor of three hundred years earlier. There were fifty neat little studs; each, however, had an unlimited number of functions, according to the mode of operation - for the character visible on each stud changed according to the mode. -- Arthur C. Clarke, Imperial Earth, 1976 http://www.technovelgy.com/ct/content.asp?Bnum=1267 http://www.technovelgy.com/ct/content.asp?Bnum=1267 That itself was nearly a decade after the newspad of 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968): http://technovelgy.com/ct/content.asp?Bnum=529 http://technovelgy.com/ct/content.asp?Bnum=529 https://www.invidio.us/watch?v=-3949GAIokg https://www.invidio.us/watch?v=-3949GAIokg See also Vannevar Bush's seminal "As We May Think" (1945) (https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1945/07/as-we-may-think/303881/ https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1945/07/as-we-m...) which discusses desktop devices, the ever-popular Dick Tracy watch, introduced in 1946 (Garyn G. Roberts, Dick Tracy and American Culture: Morality and Mythology, Text and Context (McFarland, 2003), p. 38), H.G. Wells predicting a Wikipedia-like service, "The World Brain" (1937) (https://sherlock.ischool.berkeley.edu/wells/world_brain.html https://sherlock.ischool.berkeley.edu/wells/world_brain.html), and E.M. Forster's "The Machine Stops" (1909) (https://www.ele.uri.edu/faculty/vetter/Other-stuff/The-Machine-Stops.pdf https://www.ele.uri.edu/faculty/vetter/Other-stuff/The-Machi...)
- dredmorbius 7y ago
  And another several examples, some quite detailed in capabilities, listed here: https://scifi.stackexchange.com/questions/93979/did-science-fiction-anticipate-a-device-like-a-smartphone https://scifi.stackexchange.com/questions/93979/did-science-...

by vl 7y ago

dredmorbius 7y ago

Duncan Makenzie had a new minisec, and he was not quite sure how parts of it worked. The 'Sec was the standard size of all such units, determined by what can fit comfortably in the human hand. At a quick glance, it did not differ greatly from one of the small electronic calculators that had started coming into general use at the end of the twentieth century. It was, however, infinitely more versatile, and Duncan could not imagine what life would be like without it. Because of the finite size of clumsy human fingers, it had no more controls than that of its ancestor of three hundred years earlier. There were fifty neat little studs; each, however, had an unlimited number of functions, according to the mode of operation - for the character visible on each stud changed according to the mode. -- Arthur C. Clarke, Imperial Earth, 1976 http://www.technovelgy.com/ct/content.asp?Bnum=1267 http://www.technovelgy.com/ct/content.asp?Bnum=1267 That itself was nearly a decade after the newspad of 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968): http://technovelgy.com/ct/content.asp?Bnum=529 http://technovelgy.com/ct/content.asp?Bnum=529 https://www.invidio.us/watch?v=-3949GAIokg https://www.invidio.us/watch?v=-3949GAIokg See also Vannevar Bush's seminal "As We May Think" (1945) (https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1945/07/as-we-may-think/303881/ https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1945/07/as-we-m...) which discusses desktop devices, the ever-popular Dick Tracy watch, introduced in 1946 (Garyn G. Roberts, Dick Tracy and American Culture: Morality and Mythology, Text and Context (McFarland, 2003), p. 38), H.G. Wells predicting a Wikipedia-like service, "The World Brain" (1937) (https://sherlock.ischool.berkeley.edu/wells/world_brain.html https://sherlock.ischool.berkeley.edu/wells/world_brain.html), and E.M. Forster's "The Machine Stops" (1909) (https://www.ele.uri.edu/faculty/vetter/Other-stuff/The-Machine-Stops.pdf https://www.ele.uri.edu/faculty/vetter/Other-stuff/The-Machi...)

dredmorbius 7y ago
And another several examples, some quite detailed in capabilities, listed here: https://scifi.stackexchange.com/questions/93979/did-science-fiction-anticipate-a-device-like-a-smartphone https://scifi.stackexchange.com/questions/93979/did-science-...