The prediction, in brief:

Flat-panel screens bearing a multitude of images will be household regulars. They will range from tiny ones, costing perhaps $5 each and plastered everywhere, to wall-size ones for viewing video. The smaller ones, says Weiser, are “where you’ll plan your grocery list or do your homework. They’ll be the equivalent of Post-it notes on the refrigerator or the crumpled-up notepaper in your pocket.”

Predictor: Weiser, Mark

Prediction, in context:

In a 1995 article for Time, reporter Barrett Seaman writes about future technologies. He quotes Mark Weiser. He writes:”At Xerox’s Palo Alto Research Center in California, where the PC, on-screen icons and the laser printer originated, Mark Weiser, manager of the computer science laboratory, envisions a world in which flat-panel screens bearing a multitude of images will be household regulars. They will range from tiny ones, costing perhaps $5 each and plastered everywhere, to wall-size ones for viewing video. The smaller ones, says Weiser, are ‘where you’ll plan your grocery list or do your homework. They’ll be the equivalent of Post-it notes on the refrigerator or the crumpled-up notepaper in your pocket.’ In Weiser’s world, people will wake up to a tiny bedside screen that gives the time and the weather forecast and even displays news headlines or sports scores. Pocket-size screens would also serve as remote controls for larger screens in the bedroom or living room, where family members will use them variously to watch TV, read the newspaper (which will be customized for each member’s personal interests) or draw up the family grocery list. To get themselves through the day, people will carry pocket-size Personal Assistants, called smart badges or smart cards, encoded with basic information that uniquely identifies them. Simple versions of such devices would allow their carriers to walk through security checkpoints – a concept already being tested in a section of the Paris Metro.”

Date of prediction: January 1, 1995

Topic of prediction: Getting, Sharing Information

Subtopic: General

Name of publication: Time

Title, headline, chapter name: The Future is Already Here

Quote Type: Partial quote

Page number or URL of document at time of study:
http://www.proquest.umi.com/pqdweb?Did=000000001899061&Fmt=3&Deli=1&Mtd=1&Idx=

This data was logged into the Elon/Pew Predictions Database by: Anderson, Janna Quitney