Romenesko Misc.
In recent weeks, numerous websites have posted a video that shows an iPad-like tablet being displayed in 1994. This “amazingly prescient presentation on the tablet-y future of news consumption” — as Gawker called it — came from former Knight Ridder exec Roger Fidler, who is now predicting that iPad-like devices will be ubiquitous worldwide by 2021. He tells Romenesko:
Microsoft introduced tablet PCs in 2002, but they were not the devices I had been dreaming about. They were just pen-based portable computers. Sony introduced eReaders with paper-like displays in 2005 and Amazon made them popular in 2007 with the Kindle, but most of these devices had, and continue to have, small displays that are best suited for reading books. It took Steve Jobs and the team he assembled at Apple to finally make my original vision of a tablet – a lightweight, easy-to-use, nearly magazine-size, mobile display device that could function as a popular digital alternative to ink printed on paper – into a reality. By 2021, I would expect iPad-like devices to be ubiquitous worldwide.
Fidler — now Program Director for Digital Publishing at the Reynolds Journalism Institute — was right about the iPad, but admits he missed other developments:
I completely missed the global smartphone revolution and underestimated how rapidly wireless broadband services would develop. Obviously, the kiosk I included in the 1994 video is no longer required for accessing and downloading digital content. I also missed the impact that search engines (Google mostly), non-traditional news aggregators (such as Flipboard and Pulse) and social media (notably Facebook and Twitter) would have on redefining newspapers and the news media in general.
Comments
Add Your Comment