given at several other educational and hobbyist conferences.
Some 80 slides and graphics are used in the live presentation most of which, unfortunately, cannot be reproduced here.
INTRODUCTI ON facilities - hospitals frequently keep all their patient records on computers. When you're admitted you often undergo some kind of questioning process. One psychiatric hospital out in Utah takes the entire patient history, and in fact, does the preliminary diagnosiS of all entering patients by means of an on-line computer program. College admissions, for instance, Fort Lauderdale Community College, and hundreds of others use improve education somehow, a very substantial agreement that computers would improve law enforcement, a little less agree-ment, particularly among younger people, that computers would improve health care; and some agreement that computers are United States. There was some feeling, particularly pronounced among west coast respondents, that the computer could influence the outcome of elections. Senator John Tunney of California forecasting of election results.
"Computers dehumanize society by treating everyone as a,num-ber." On that statement we had some ambivalence - some people
"Computers are best suited for doing monotonous, repetitive tasks." Well 80% of the adults agreed with that although only
~ normal social interactions among users.
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repetitivA, monotonous tasks. 80.0 10.3 51.0 21.8-
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fearful of any kind of industrialization or technological breakthrough. The Luddites were anti-technology - to them theFIRST COMPUTER FAIRE PROCEEDINGS BOX 1579, PALO ALTO CA 94302 PAGE 52 percentage of people who disagree. "Computers make mistakes 10% of ,the time." You have to feel sorry for the 10% of the driving offenses, plus a 28-day driving suspension, Police proved sympathetic when it was found that "the computer at the non-payment of the amount shown." Why capitalize "computerized"i Does that mean the computer printed that notice on the bottom first successful interplanetary lobotomy. The movie Colossus -have you seen that one? Colossus "wakes up" and gains uses reasonably realistically and making some half decent spec-ulations. Unfortunately, very few people read science fiction so we don't have to worry about 'many people getting a realistic and never have forecasted future technological innovation or invention very well.
FIRST COMPUTER FAIRE PROCEEDINGS BOX 1579. PALO ALTO CA 94302 PAGE 53 years into the future. Even so, we can't foresee exactly when
everything is going to occur. We would certainly expect that processor instruction speed would continue to increase very rapidly. Packing density will also continue to dramatically increase. Currently, we are within two orders of magnitude of SELLING PRICE ($0001 OF CPU PLUS MEMORY
Coupled with miniaturization, prices are rapidly falling.
Let me tell you that more than one manufacturer is a little important thing in computers and technology today 'in making
them all work. '
So what does all this mean when you put all this technology together? Well, obviously it means smaller terminals, terminals that fit in your pocket. Sophisticated and very small color
Extensible, user defined, simple languages are being devel-oped. Harvard has a new language called ECL. It's not like
That's precisely what Dynabook provides. It's a phenomenal machine. I'd like to think that within 10 years it will be as
FIRST COMPUTER FAIRE PROCEEDINGS BOX 1579, PALO ALTO CA 94302 Just what's needed for a computer. So while the player will be
brought into the home for entertainment, it's real power lies in he fact that if you couple the video-disc system with a micro-processor and keyboard you have incredibly powerful audio/vis-ual/computationaltl'ducational/recreational device. One video-disc can store 10 bits of information, the entire encyclo-pedia Brittanica for example, or a very comprehensive software library. You could have Jackie Stewart introducing the Monaco Grand Prix, taking you on a pre-recorded ride around the circuit and then turning the controls over to you. Or Kirk handing you the controls of the Enterprise just as the Klingons are about to attack. Or Fran Tarkington coming off the field putting you in as quarterback in the Super Bowl.
THE CHALLENGE
There's no question that in 5 to 10 years solid state and real ted technology are going to put some fantastic things well within the reach of everyone who wants them. It's equally clear that most people have little idea of what they'd do with a computer if they had one. Hence, we have quite a chasm between the insiders (those who have learned about computers from school, work, or hobby) and the outsiders who don't know much about computers and don't really care (today).
It would be nice to think that this chasm could be bridged by education (like the new math or metric system?), but it's not likely that schools will really face up to computers until every kid has his own (pocket calculators allover again).
Business and industry are so wedded to large EDP Systems with most DP Managers pretending that microcomputers are just toys, hence we can't expect any help from that quarter. Most likely it will be the people, plain ordinary folks, who see a friend with a computer and decide to get one of their own. And as this increasingly happens, we're going to have the most massive domino effect you ever saw calculators and CB move over -you ain't seen nothin' yet. Computer power to the people is on the way!
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