"Human-computer interaction is the real growth area," Kanarick says. "I don't think it's too blue-sky to say that you'll find a computer in the American home by the year 2000. They're getting smaller and less expensive every year. One day computers will be running our houses, ordering our groceries, doing a thousand things we now do for ourselves.
"Interacting with them will be a common and casual thing, like using the telephone is today. No matter how automated the world becomes the machines will still be working for our convenience, and not the other way around."
See also:
Computersville is almost here (1970)
Living Room of the Future (1979)
Computers the size of a room (1970)
Fuzzy-Duzzy, The Computer You Cuddle (1976)
3 comments:
I assume that by "in the home", he meant built into the home and controlling its functions, rather than merely owned by the homeowners. By 1978 there were already several relatively popular home computers on the market, including the Apple II.
Indeed. One fact that seem to be obvious now is that writers in the past used to believe that computers would all be running stuff by themselves, making their own decisions in an almost humane way. Nowadays we have more computer processing power our house than an entire science lab had in 1970, but we use it for *augmenting* our abilities, not for doing stuff alone... they won't buy our groceries by themselves, but they help us buying them online.
well, they won't buy our stuff *yet*
but once we get some rfid tags on the groceries and set up a few limitations/preferences, we'll be all set!
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