A few weeks ago, when posting a TeleBlog comment, I mentioned an interesting device in one of Arthur C. Clarke‘s books, Imperial Earth.
The device was called a “Minisec” and was a combination video/sound recorder, telephone and file storage system. It was small—hand-sized—and could be connected to a computer terminal by what Clarke called an “optical interface”; file exchange was measured in megabytes per second. The device had a keyboard with small keys and several “modes” so that keys could be used for multiple functions.
’75 tech
Sound familiar? The only thing Clarke hadn’t foreseen was the use of wireless broadband to connect the device to a worldwide “file storage” system (the Internet?). Considering that the book was published in 1975, a few years ahead of the time I was presented with a strange device called a “personal computer” running VisiCalc, this prediction now seems very daring. (And for those weren’t around then—that was probably about 1979.)
Unfortunately, while Clarke may have been a visionary, he didn’t predict the commercial exploitation of the Web. He looked forward to a time when all books, artworks and museum exhibits could be accessed by everyone on earth. Oh well, maybe ACC was better at predicting technology than human nature.
Clarke’s Newspad
After I originally wrote this, David Rothman remined me of Clarke’s other “book reader” prediction in 2001—of a device called the Newspad. I had forgotten about the Newspad, perhaps because 2001 had so many predictions of new technology. Also see information on author Neal Stephenson‘s E Ink-style device.
Related: The history of PDAs—in both real life and sci-fi.
Having read Imperial Earth when it was first released in 1976, the minisec was, to me then, a startling extrapolation of the newly developed digital calculator.
As the protagonist started on Titan and travelled through the solar system perhaps the file storage should have been system wide.
Anther memorable to me piece of technology was a personal computer that could link with arbitrary feeds anywhere on Titan with it the protagonist finds an open feed linked to a microphone on Titan’s surface, by just playing with his computer. At the time I could not conceive how this was possible. Today it would be a trivial use of the internet – if there was a microphone on Titan’s surface.
For another almost-there prediction check out Against The Fall Of Night for virtual reality role playing.
Carol Jurd: Thanks for the interesting article about Arthur Clarke’s future visions. He wrote an oddly ominous story titled “Dial F for Frankenstein” in 1965 about a communication system obtaining independent sentience. Here is Clarke’s description:
Many years later the “Terminator” series of films featured Skynet a sentient computer network.
I vaguely remember that the 1977 novel “Inherit the Stars” by James P. Hogan contains a portable computer, but the details are unclear in my memory. This is the same timeframe as Clarke’s “Imperial Earth”. The Hogan novel is the first book in a trilogy and I found a message in the comment section for the trilogy at Amazon that seems relevant:
Clarke’s 1969 Newspad was one of the answers to the Teleread quiz that appeared last month.
Yes…big thanks to Garson for being my pointer to the Newspad reminder (via his TeleQuiz)! – David