[4eyes] Retro-picture: smartphone as envisioned by Xerox PARC 20 years ago

[Saiph Savage]

Folks,

I was digging through an old paper about an auto-blogging system from 1994
(Mik Lamming’s “Pepys” system) and ran across this picture you might find
amusing: it’s the Xerox ParcTab, which was Xerox’s 1990’s vision of what a
smartphone (“handheld computing device”) might look like.  It’s interesting
how technologies and design aesthetics change the look of a basic concept as
it evolves: the pen interface; the assumption that you’d fit it in your hand
and keep it there for a while (the buttons); the line-oriented display;
behind the scenes, the assumption that this is a terminal rather than
something with a lot of standalone intelligence and storage….




Thought you’d enjoy it.

Cheers!


~Saiph
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