Category: Tech

In the Wii hours of this morning Eric’s Christmas wiish came true at last. Those are his hands clutching the Wiimote — that’s Nintendo’s pun, not mine!

Thanks to this Web site, Carol was confident the local Target store would have the Wii in stock. She was number 9 in line for 70 units — by far the largest shipment since the day the Wii was released. If the Wii had kept its original name, the Revolution, Carol would have been Revolution 9!

The motion sensor bar fits perfectly on Eric’s TV. The digital camera captures the bar’s infrared light.

One popular new feature on the Net is [the] Associated Press service. From anywhere on the Net you can log in and get the news that’s coming live over the wire or ask for all the items on a particular subject that have come in during the last 24 hours. Plus a fortune cookie. Project that to household terminals, and so much for newspapers (in present form).

Stewart Brand
Rolling Stone
December 7, 1972

In 1972 a truly astounding educational film was made, with the thoroughly boring title, “Computer Networks: The Heralds of Resource Sharing.” It’s a bunch of academics and engineers in Boston explaining how they were changing the world forever.
[flv:http://www.dograt.com/Movies/Wordpress/DEC06/ComputerNetworks.flv 440 330]If you’re not into technology, probably only the last few minutes of this 25-minute film will be of interest. The original format of this video prevents me from extracting excerpts, but I can offer you a few minutes of audio. Listen to this, and keep in mind that it’s from 1972. The voice at the start and the end is J.C.R. Licklider, who died in 1990.

[flv:http://www.dograt.com/Movies/Wordpress/DEC06/iPod.flv 400 240]

Here’s a brief bit of video about the iPod. Watch that, then read this quote.

Since huge quantities of information can be computer-digitalized [sic] and transmitted, music researchers could, for example, swap records over the Net with “essentially perfect fidelity.” So much for record stores (in present form).

Stewart Brand
Rolling Stone
December 7, 1972

When vinyl was king, and FM Album Rock had yet to completely take over from AM Top 40 radio, Stewart Brand made the conceptual leap past CD, all the way to Napster.

[flv:http://www.dograt.com/Movies/Wordpress/DEC06/sketchpad.flv 400 300]
This series isn’t a history of the Internet, per se. It’s a gosh-wow look back at an article in Rolling Stone that I read in 1972, while still in high school. Part 1 showed a mock-up of a proposed personal computer called a Dynabook, that was the brainchild of Alan Kay.

Here is Kay’s original drawing for the Dynabook, which was ahead of its time, to say the least. Kay is credited with uttering the notable quote, “The best way to predict the future is to invent it.”

Another visionary whose work was discussed in the article is Ivan Sutherland, who between 1961 and 1963 created the groundbreaking computer program called Sketchpad. The video above is an excruciatingly dry, but exceedingly significant, 20-minute demonstration of Sketchpad. It was produced for Boston PBS station WGBH by Russell Morash, who introduced TV viewers to Julia Child and created the show “This Old House.”