Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!swrinde!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!unix.cis.pitt.edu!scratch From: scratch@unix.cis.pitt.edu (Steven J Owens) Newsgroups: comp.society.futures Subject: Re: Looking Backwards Message-ID: <21677@unix.cis.pitt.edu> Date: 17 Jan 90 17:03:13 GMT References: <9001010220.AA17906@world.std.com> <752@arc.UUCP> Reply-To: scratch@unix.cis.pitt.edu (Steven J Owens) Organization: Univ. of Pittsburgh, Comp & Info Services Lines: 66 In article <752@arc.UUCP> steve@arc.UUCP (Steve Savitzky) writes: >>The keyboard will go the way of the card reader. Voice-and-pointer >o Pocket computers will generally use handwriting recognition on their > touch-sensitive screens, rather than voice inputs. > >o Pocket computers will have a full-sized, touch-sensitive screen. > They will approximate a smart pad of paper, at which point almost > everyone who now carries a notebook around will want one. Too late - both of these already exist (and I've been *waiting* for them to show up...). For the first, look through old issues of Omni magazine. Somebody is using a light-pen & clipboard computer combo with a program that converts the hand printing to text. The next, obvious step is to move to touch sensitive - that's here too, in the form of the Agilis system handheld workstation, which also incorporates menus and touch-screen tech to allow one-handed use "in the field." The Agilis handheld is one helluva machine and if I had my choice I'd buy the $12000 "deluxe" configuration with: "...80386 processor, 4 megabytes of memory, a 20-megabyte hard disk drive, the console slice, a keypad slice, two battery slices, and a power converter" and other options including a wireless packet radio communications slice offering 230,000 bps network communications within a range of 1 kilometer outdoors and about 100 meters indoors (though soon enough there'll be packet radio networks stretching through most buildings and probably a lot of the outdoors). The thing to really wait for is the price to drop to affordable ranges... at which point everybody and his brother will have one, and you'll be able to send e-mail to most people and be pretty sure it'll get to them within minutes. >o Pocket computers + _partially_transparent_ eyephones + locators + > cellular networks will permit cyberspace to be overlaid on the real > world. This will permit virtual nametags (title bars for people), > virtual costumes, virtual street signs, and the like. THIS is interesting... similar ideas had occurred to me, but only on a limited scale, probably in specialized nightclubs and bars... I could really see it spreading to common use in society, however... >o Attempts will be made to prevent the development of artificial > intelligences. Opponents will be in the amusing position of trying > to legislate against something they claim is impossible in the first > place. I think perhaps you'll see more attempts oriented towards preventing the usurping of human "jobs" by AIs. To a degree I agree with this - we already have tons of functioning intelligences to do jobs like this, why not work on figuring out how to utilize them, not replace them? On the other hand, just because a new development will affect the jobs of a segment of the population is no reason to fight it - efforts should be made, instead, to channel the human brainpower freed from the mental "drudgery" into creative/productive ends, where they will probably outstrip any AIs for centuries to come. Steven J. Owens | Scratch@Pittvms | Scratch@unix.cis.pitt.edu "Show us endless neon vistas / Castles made of laserlight / Take us to the shopping sector / In the vortex of the night / Past the shining mylar towers / Past the ravaged tenements / To a place we can't remember / For a time we won't forget" -- Warren Zevon, Transverse City