| Ah, just saw that the author has included the original text as PDF so don't have to speculate about original intent after all Does seem to mostly be "here are some people in touch with current developments happening in the world thinking about their next phase" more than full-blown futurism - but still super interesting to read (if only to see the vestiges of tech optimism pre-dotcom-enshittification) A few things which leap out that weren't included in the original post: - "everything will be smart - that is, responsive to its external or internal environment" Predicted the glassy eyed dream at the time, but not the more cynical reality we got where that smartness more often benefits the seller than the consumer --- - "in-depth personal medical histories will be on record and in full control of the individual in some form of medical smart card or disk" Another fun combo of rarely safe prediction based on developments of the time mixed with (in hindsight) overly optimistic assumptions about commercialism --- And the bit summarised as purportedly predicting "(the internet)" actually has a pretty neat bit which was missed "face-to-face, voice-to-voice, person-to-data, and data-to-data communication will be available to any place at any time from anywhere." Predicting Skype/zoom seems a tad more interesting (even though things like Dick Tracy or 2001: A space odyssey had long had us wishing for it before 1995) The preceding bit aged less well "...broadband network of networks based on fiber optics; other techniques, such as communications satellites, cellular, and microwave will be ancillary." Interesting that they appeared to be emphasising an _increase_ in wired data transit But not surprising, as back then any cellular comms were far from impressive in comparison to the big-ass wired links you could use from universities (That said, even back then we had microwave links acting as secondary high speed links for campuses which didn't yet have fibre or coax installed) |
The Mother of All Demos was in '68, though. Some of the past (now legendary stuff) like this or the Lisp workstations (Interlisp-D: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cKjFJDZmWNM) still looks futuristic today.