Newspaper Company Predicted the iPad Way Back in 1994

Posted April 25, 2011 1:32pm by HVmedia

Tags: business, futurism, iPad, Knight Ridder, newspapers, tablet computers, technology

Gawker unearthed a video from 1994, where the Knight Ridder think tank put together a bit of futurism regarding how people would access journalism and content. Amazingly, the video pretty much predicts the iPad and our current state of fixation with tablets as personal media consumption devices.

Titled The Tablet Newspaper: A Vision of the Future, this video imagines a world in which people carry around portable computing devices that will “weigh under two pounds,” have a display “comparable to ink on paper,” and will be able to “blend text, video, audio and graphics.” Oh — and the prototype demo looks exactly like an iPad.

“We may still use computers to create information,” this video says. “But we’ll use the tablet to interact with information: reading, watching, listening.”

Which is exactly what most people think tablets are for. In watching this video, however, it’s hard to continue to have sympathy for the declining newspaper business as they lament their shrinking business. This video is so spot on it’s scary and that was in 1994!

This illustrates the lesson that access to information doesn’t necessarily encourage proactive action.

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Posted April 25, 2011 1:32pm

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