“In 1968 — three years before the invention of the microprocessor — Alan Kay stumbled across Don Bitzer’s early flat-panel display. Its resolution was 16 pixels by 16 pixels — an impressive improvement over their earlier 4 pixel by 4 pixel display.
Alan saw those 256 glowing orange squares, and he went home, and he picked up a pen, and he drew a picture of a goddamn iPad.
And then he chased that carrot through decades of groundbreaking research, much of which is responsible for the hardware and software that you’re currently reading this with.
That’s the kind of ambitious, long-range vision I’m talking about. Pictures Under Glass is old news. Let’s start using our hands.”
Great food for thought on what could be wrong with most “future concepts” we’ve seen recently: A Brief Rant on the Future of Interaction Design.
Minority Report, 40 years earlier.
