The display might turn into a metaphoric music store. By touching the pictures of various shelves, one could browse through a stack of compact disks. Touching one CD icon might trigger a wireless call to the record company – and the response would be a brief snippet of one of the songs on the CD. A button with a picture of a package might flash at that point, and if you touched it, the disk would arrive at your house the next day, billed to your bank account.
Predictor: Levy, Steven
Prediction, in context:In his 1994 book “Insanely Great,” Steven Levy writes about the future of communication: ”[General Magic’s] plan is to offer an interactive cyberspace of icons on a screen that fronts a hand-held device. For instance, the display might turn into a metaphoric music store. By touching the pictures of various shelves, one could browse through a stack of compact disks. Touching one CD icon might trigger a wireless call to the record company – and the response would be a brief snippet of one of the songs on the CD. A button with a picture of a package might flash at that point, and if you touched it, the disk would arrive at your house the next day, billed to your bank account.”
Date of prediction: January 1, 1994
Topic of prediction: Information Infrastructure
Subtopic: Wireless Technologies
Name of publication: Insanely Great
Title, headline, chapter name: Chapter 11
Quote Type: Direct quote
Page number or URL of document at time of study:
Page 285
This data was logged into the Elon/Pew Predictions Database by: Lusk, James T.