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dbarlett | 7 years ago

I think his vision of smartphones has held up well. From page 74 of my hardcover copy of The Road Ahead:

What do you carry on your person now? Probably at least keys, identification, money, and a watch. Quite possibly you also carry credit cards, a checkbook, traveler's checks, an address book, an appointment book, a notepad, reading material, a camera, a pocket tape recorder, a cellular phone, a pager, concert tickets, a map, a compass, a calculator, an electronic entry card, photographs, and perhaps a loud whistle to summon help.

You'll be able to keep all these and more in another information appliance we call the wallet PC.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/A2o-6_WCYAAaNw5.jpg:large

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apatters|7 years ago

Great comment and I guess he really did see more of it coming than I was aware of. It seems like the main thing he miscalculated, ironically, was how people would use these devices -- it turns out that all that functional stuff is totally dwarfed by being a Facebook zombie, in terms of total eyeball hours.

It's like we all had this innate drive (or susceptibility?) to zombification that we weren't aware of until the smartphone actually appeared