| <><><><><><><><> T h e V O G O N N e w s S e r v i c e <><><><><><><><>
Edition : 2966 Monday 29-Nov-1993 Circulation : 6516
VNS MAIN NEWS ..................................... 45 Lines
VNS COMPUTER NEWS ................................. 133 "
VNS TECHNOLOGY WATCH .............................. 59 "
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VNS TECHNOLOGY WATCH: [Mike Taylor, VNS Correspondent]
===================== [Littleton, MA, USA ]
Futures - Lost Or Postponed
Sure, the information superhighway sounds as inevitable as it does
alluring. But don't count your bandwidths before they're wired. Modem
industrial history is littered with technological revolutions that took
unexpected directions, took longer than predicted, or cost more than
anyone imagined. Some prominent corpses:
ROBOTS. When, in 1939, Westinghouse produced a robotic man, Electro,
and his robot dog, Sparko, that could "talk see, smell, count, and
sing" to audiences at the New York World's Fair, it looked as if
personal robots might be for real. By the 1950s, pundits were predicting
these rascals would be so ubiquitous that humans would work only ten
hours a week. Are you?
THE ATOMIC AGE. In the 1950s atom power was going to be the power "too
cheap to meter." Engineers predicted that pellets of plutonium would
power homes, refrigerators, wristwatches, trains, planes, and
automobiles. In 1958, Ford Motor Co. got a jump on the impending atomic
age by making a model car with sweeping tail fins called the Nucleon.
Its imaginary power plant: A portable, rechargeable, nuclear reactor.
Such aspirations ended when Americans developed a severe, and seemingly
permanent, case of nuclear anxiety.
ULTRASONICS. Ultrasound has established itself in some marvelous
niches, such as cleaning jewelry, moisturizing the air in infant
nurseries, and producing those hideously ugly (yet wildly exhilarating
for parents) sonogram pictures of babies in utero. But the future-gazers
of 25 years ago anticipated much more. They foresaw ultrasonic
dishwashers, washing machines, and showers. What sonophiles failed to
anticipate is that no one would prefer sound waves beating dirt from
his body in dusty clouds to having hot, steamy, skin-tingling water
scrub it off his back.
A PLANE IN EVERY GARAGE. A House of the Future at the 1933 World's Fair
in Chicago contained on its first floor a recreation room, a garage and
a hangar plane. "People thought this technology would trickle down when
a Henry Ford of flight devised a way to make safe, inexpensive personal
aircraft, says Joseph Corn, professor of American history at Stanford
University. While the Ford of personal flight never appeared, technology
did in the end make it affordable for almost anyone to fly, provided
every person is willing to squeeze into a little seat in what usually
feels like a cattle car.
As for the electronic highway, remember teletext, video phones, and
quadraphonic sound, among other things? All became road kill on this
future freeway because they have failed (so far) to develop viable
markets.
Timing, after all, is critical. In the mid-1940s science fiction writer
Arthur C. Clarke foresaw the possibility of constructing a global
communications network based on satellites in geosynchronous orbit. But
had anyone tried to carry out Clarke's vision before the 1960s, he
almost certainly would have failed because Clarke did not foresee the
semiconductor revolution that makes today's satellites possible. The
satellites he envisioned were occupied, like lighthouses of old, by a
tender who stood ready to replace burned-out vacuum tubes. Wonder why
he didn't think of robots?
{Fortune November 15,1993}
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<><><><><><><><> VNS Edition : 2966 Monday 29-Nov-1993 <><><><><><><><>
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| From: US1RMC::"[email protected]" "MAIL-11 Daemon" 22-SEP-1994 16:48:06.23
To: Multiple recipients of list NEW-LIST <[email protected]>
CC:
Subj: NEW: 2020WORLD - Exploration of Life in the Year 2020
2020WORLD on [email protected]
2020WORLD will be a global group exploration of life in the year 2020.
2020world is a weekly column that is published in the Sunday Seattle Times
Personal Technology section. Kurt Dahl, VP of Information Technology at
The Seattle Times is the author of this column. The column will be posted
to this mailing list every Monday in hopes of encouraging outrageous,
yet intellectual, ideas that are far outside the typical, boring
discussions of home-shopping and video-on-demand.
2020world will explore how our lives will change when the information
highway is a familiar and integral part of our society. The column will
*NOT* be about technology, that's why the year 2020 was chosen, by then we
can all agree that a broadband, fully switched, ubiquitous network will
have been in place for many years. How that network will change our
lives, not how it will work, is the question 2020world will address.
Here is where you come in, and this is the most important part. With each
column, an idea will be put into play, a toss of the first jump ball.
Then we want to inspire readers to comment, explore, and extend that
idea with their responses. The best will be published in the paper. Your
responses and ideas are needed and welcomed, hence this invitation for
you to join the mailing list.
1. To subscribe to the 2020world list send an e-mail message to:
[email protected]
Leave the subject line blank and use the following message:
SUBSCRIBE 2020WORLD
2. To unsubscribe, send an e-mail message as in Step 1, but leave the
message:
UNSUBSCRIBE 2020WORLD
3. 2020world is an unmoderated list. All mail sent to this list will be
sent to all other subscribers. Send all mail that you want posted to:
[email protected]
Please join in and help us understand the real nature of our world after
the information highway is built. Send your subscription e-mail right
now! We're looking forward to adding your thoughts to our discussion.
Owner: Laura Ashworth -- [email protected]
Ass't to Kurt Dahl, author of column
The Seattle Times
P.O. Box 70
Seattle, WA 98111
(206) 464-3339 (voice mail)
(206) 382-8898 (FAX)
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% Sender: NEW-LIST - New List Announcements <[email protected]>
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