[podperson]

Go read "Foundation" by Isaac Asimov and note the description of Hari Seldon's notepad. I believed it was written in the 50s, but Wikipedia says 1942. (Maybe 1942 refers to a short story that became part of it.)

In WWII Douglas Engelbart was trained as a radar operator. After WWII he is exposed to computers (driven by punchcards and tape, and emitting printed output) and immediately thinks "these should interact via cathode ray tubes".

It seems to me that anyone with imagination who could grok what a computer was immediately imagined the computer being embedded in any information device they could think of -- whether it's a watch, a notepad, a telephone, or the human brain.

The "light pen" was invented in 1952. Do you think the inventor's "vision" was that it be part of a monstrously big, complex, and expensive piece of hardware? (Do you think he/she hadn't read "Foundation"?)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Light_pen

Alan Kay has done many amazing things, we don't need to fight about this specific thing.

[vanderZwan]

Writing science fiction is one thing, pursuing your vision and getting it made into a reality is entirely another. But you're right - we are probably more in agreement than disagreement.

[podperson]

I was mainly overreacting to the original article which is excessively worshipful. It's hard to argue against Alan Kay's importance, but likewise Donald Knuth, Engelbart, and Kernighan (among the living). All these guys relentlessly pursued pieces of the vision that makes the Macbook Pro I'm typing this on possible. The visible form factor is, I think, almost the least important (and most obvious) pieces of the puzzle. After all, the typewriter and the notepad are the same form factors as my laptop/PC and iPad.