Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!ucbvax!MICA.BERKELEY.EDU!bowles
From: bowles@MICA.BERKELEY.EDU (Jeff A. Bowles)
Newsgroups: comp.society.futures
Subject: Re: Electronic Newspapers
Message-ID: <8905091922.AA10902@mica.berkeley.edu>
Date: 9 May 89 19:22:52 GMT
Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU
Organization: The Internet
Lines: 23

"The whole picture seems to be ruined by the entry of a portable
computer to this particular scene."

Maybe not a PC-clone, but something else.

A half-century ago, the same thing would have been said about
television, and a century ago, the same thing would have been said
about the radio.

And the same thing will be said three hundred years from now, when
people go from "reading" the news to having a personal robot sit at the
table and gossip with you.

	Jeff Bowles

ps. The "300 years" part is probably too long, but I don't see such
devices in the next fifty, that sit down and tell you the newest
political jokes and ask if you've heard the one about the warlords of
the Vegan empire...

pps. Sorry if this has an "SF-LOVERS" flavor. But "it's just not
right!" doesn't sound like the sort of argument I want to see in a list
called "info-futures".