BigShinyThing

Computer scientist and educational technologist Alan Kay is famous for two things: his exhortation that

The best way to predict the future, is to invent it.

and his stunning success in doing just that — during his time with Xerox in the early 1970s, Kay and his team developed not just the computer interface as we know it — with windows, icons, mice and pointers, but also, in 1972, conceived of the Dynabook: a radical portable device somewhere between a laptop and a tablet PC, unbuildable for another 30 years.

We’ve been reading some of those early papers, and were interested to see what he had to say, in 1972, about what people would do with such tools:

The ability to make copies easily and to ‘own’ one’s information will probably not debilitate existing markets, just as xerography has enhanced publishing (rather than hurting it, as some predicted), and as tapes have not damaged the LP record business but have provided a way to organize one’s own music. Most people are not interested in acting as a source or bootlegger; rather, they like to permute and play with what they own. [our emphasis]

and

A combination of this ‘carry anywhere’ device and a global information utility such as the ARPA network or two-way cable TV, will bring the libraries and schools [not to mention stores and billboards] of the world to the home. One can imagine one of the first programs an owner will write is a filter to eliminate advertising. [our emphasis]