According to the company Empruve, this futuristic multimedia device from 1993, "will become as much an integral part of our lives as the telephone, the television, the typewriter and the book." The photo and its caption (below) were found in the book Understanding Hypermedia.
According to Caruso.com the developer costs for Empruve's Cornucopia were between $4,000 and $5,000.
Advanced multimedia systems will become as much an integral part of our lives as the telephone, the television, the typewriter and the book. "Cornucopia" demonstrates how ergonomic a multimedia system can be. The system uses DVI technology and a CDROM drive, and combines an A4 paper white screen and a colour screen (for stills and motion video) with a new control device called a "tadpole."
See also:
Starfire (1994)
GTE's Classroom of the Future (1987)
Motorola's 2000 A.D. (1990)
Pacific Bell Concept Video (1991)
Connections: AT&T's Vision of the Future (1993)
Flowers by Alice (1992)
Apple's Knowledge Navigator (1987)
Apple's Grey Flannel Navigator (1988)
The thing is bigger and clunkier than many notebook computers even of the day, and as far as I can tell it's basically a great big e-book reader with largish speakers and a teeny color screen pasted on the side.
ReplyDeleteThe "tadpole" does look kind of like the Wii Nunchuk attachment.
It's amazing how dated futurism from the early 1990s already looks.
Why would we need a dedicated learning machine when our computers are already suited to the task? Youtube and Wikipedia, integrated, would serve the same purpose.
ReplyDeleteAny forecast of technology that has a guy in a suit is doomed! :)
ReplyDeleteActually, the guy's right. Whatever that is has been forgotten- but the basic idea, of a 'multimedia device' (which I translate as a computer), being an integral part of our lives, is correct.
ReplyDelete