Thursday, May 9, 2019

Digital news and educational computing devices foretold years ago


©Mark Ollig 


Recently, I watched a video showing two people seated at an outdoor patio table, enjoying brunch at a downtown café.



They both took turns reading an electronic newspaper using a flat-screened computing tablet.



Every so often, the video showed a person tapping an interactive graphical element of the display screen with a stylus pen to display the content of a news story, or advertisement.



This video was recorded 25 years ago.



The first iPad wouldn’t be seen for the next 16 years.



In 1994, Roger Fidler, a journalist and newspaper designer, recorded this video, demonstrating (with a prototype) how a person would use a portable computing device to read, interact with, and share the news and information from a digital tablet newspaper.



“It may be difficult to conceptualize the idea of digital paper, but in fact, we believe that’s what’s going to happen,” Fidler said in 1994.



He was describing the electronic newspaper of the future, which was being read and interacted with on a digital device he called The Tablet.



From 1966 to 1969, the television series “Star Trek” would occasionally show a scene with crew members obtaining information from rectangular electronic clipboards with a flat display screen operated by using a stylus pen.



In the late 1980s, the television series, “Star Trek: The Next Generation,” showed crew members using what was called a PADD, or Personal Access Display Device.



The PADD was a portable handheld device closely resembled today’s mobile communication devices, like an iPhone or Galaxy 9.



One of the first well-thought-out concepts for an educational handheld tablet computer was conceived during the late 1960s by Alan C. Kay, a computer scientist working at the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center.



Kay named his portable educational tablet computer concept the DynaBook.



It was designed to be a “carry anywhere” tablet personal computer intended for student educational learning and information gathering.



While in third grade during the late 1960s, I remember studying extra hard to correctly answer the multiplication questions on the flash cards my mother would quiz me on.



There were a couple of reasons for this.



Mostly, because I would be denied watching the next television episode of “Lost in Space” until I correctly answered the questions.



I also needed to pass my third grade teacher’s (Mrs. Seymour) multiplication times-tables test.



But, I digress.



By August 1972, Kay completed his description of the DynaBook in a document called “A Personal Computer for Children of All Ages.”



“Although it should be read as science fiction, current trends in miniaturization and price reduction almost guarantee that many of the notions discussed will actually happen in the near future,” wrote Kay at the start of his book.



In this document, Kay presents several scenarios demonstrating how the DynaBook would be used; these scenarios are incredibly accurate, describing how portable computing devices are used in schools today.



Kay suggests the DynaBook personal computer may have no keyboard at all, saying “the display panel would cover the full extent of the notebook surface.”



He describes its keyboard as being “as thin as possible . . . it may have no moving parts at all – but be sensitive to pressure.”



Kay is describing the use of tactile screen sensors, which is how we extract and input information into tablet computers and smartphones.



The hand-drawn DynaBook is comparable to today’s tablet computing devices.



A touch-sensitive keyboard was stationed along the bottom of the tablet; the document he wrote describes a user operating the “multi-touch” liquid-crystal display screen.



Kay envisioned the DynaBook playing audio files, recording voice messages, and having speech recognition.



He described the tablet device obtaining information by connecting wirelessly to “centralized information storage units.”



Remember, Kay was writing this nearly 47 years ago.



He compared the technology of this futuristic portable computer with paper books.



Kay wrote how paper books allowed centuries of human knowledge to be “encapsulated and transmitted to everybody.”



He hoped the discussion of this new “active medium” (DynaBook) would inspire “some of the excitement of thought and creation.”



Kay’s diagram of the DynaBook shows it as being rectangular, measuring 12-inches-by-9-inches, with a depth of .75 inches, and wireless communication resources.



The 2019 Apple iPad Pro is rectangular, features a 12.9-inch (diagonal) display screen, has a depth of .23 inches, and includes wireless communication resources.



Today, it is commonplace to have computing tablets, laptops, notebooks, and other smart devices used by students in a school. The educational benefits Kay wrote about 47 years ago using a mobile tablet – his DynaBook – have been realized.



Fidler’s vision of having a portable tablet for electronic news retrieval has also been fulfilled.



Roger Fidler’s 1994, 13-minute video called “Tablet Newspaper,” can be viewed here: http://tinyurl.com/4y7azs6.



“A Personal Computer for Children of All Ages,” an 11-page paper written by Alan C. Kay in 1972, can be read at http://tinyurl.com/5zemqe.

The DynaBook (1994)



The Tablet (1994)