Hey guys, the big guy here.
Think back to almost a year ago when I told you that the tablet computer (the iPad, et al) was nothing really new. It was simply a culmination of several computing and communication technologies that had finally become affordable and reliable enough to put into one marketable device.
Well, today Mary Anne found proof of this via Twitter, in the form of a fascinating video made by the Knight Ridder News company back in 1994. In it they describe what they believed the future of newspapers would look like: a tablet device called an "electronic newspaper". The device they depict has many uncanny resemblances to, you guessed it, an iPad.
This is an amazing feat of prognostication, considering that the first recognizable Windows web browser (Mosaic) had been invented only a year prior to the video's release, and there was really no such thing as Internet video or animation at that time.
Granted, Knight Ridder didn't get everything right. Note the constant need for a stylus, the laughable kiosk data distribution system (wi-fi and mobile broadband were not even dreams then), and, worst of all, the newspaper-brand-centered paradigm - to wit:
Over the last 15 years there have been many attempts to develop electronic newspapers, and many of the technologists who have been pursuing these objectives assume that information is simply a commodity and people really don't care where that information comes from, as long as it matches their set of personal interests. I disagree with that view.
Roger Fiddler, founder of the Knight Ridder Information Design Lab.
Oh Roger, you were so wrong, wrong, wrong. The Internet, the most enormous storehouse of information that mankind has ever built, where newspapers now get their information... that's all it is! Piles upon piles upon piles of the personal interests of people who incessantly jabber on and on about Star Trek, Star Wars, furries, anime, politics, religion, and any other subject an OCD-infested pedant can latch onto!
You still did pretty damn good there, Roger. Check it out: